miles e drake:
Lycanthropy has often been linked with, and sometimes treated by, henbane and nightshade, and its manifestations could be explained in terms of atropinic delirium.
Discoloration of teeth and urine, bizarre behavior, nocturnal wandering, and episodic skin and facial changes have suggested a role for porphyria in the werewolf transformation.
Through many historical periods and cultures, persons believed to be werewolves have reportedly exhibited alterations in consciousness, depersonalization and derealization, acute anxiety and agitation, preoccupation with demonic possession, and compulsive or perseverative behavior, sometimes of a violent, sexually deviant or impulsive nature. Such features of werewolf behavior might also be explained by ictal and interictal manifestations of complex partial seizures, or as symptoms of the episodic dyscontrol syndrome associated with frontal lobe or limbic system disease or injury.
Ictal refers to a physiologic state or event such as a seizure, stroke or headache. The word originates from the Latin ictus, meaning a blow or a stroke. In electroencephalography (EEG), the recording during an actual seizure is said to be "ictal".
Post-ictal refers to the state shortly after the event.
Inter-ictal refers to the period of time between seizures, or convulsions, that are characteristic of an epilepsy disorder. For most people with epilepsy, the inter-ictal state corresponds to more than 99% of their life. The inter-ictal period is often used by neurologists when diagnosing epilepsy since an EEG trace will often show small inter-ictal spiking and other abnormalities known by neurologists as subclinical seizures. Inter-ictal EEG discharges are those abnormal waveforms not associated with seizure symptoms.
The term derives from the Greek πορφύρα, porphyra, meaning "purple pigment". The name is likely to have been a reference to the purple discolouration of feces and urine in patients during an attack.[1] Although original descriptions are attributed to Hippocrates, the disease was first explained biochemically by Dr Felix Hoppe-Seyler in 1874,[2] and acute porphyrias were described by the Dutch physician Prof B.J. Stokvis in 1889.[1][3]
Episodic dyscontrol syndrome (EDS, or sometimes just dyscontrol), is a pattern of abnormal, episodic, and frequently violent and uncontrollable social behavior[1] in the absence of significant provocation[2]; it can result from limbic system diseases, disorders of the temporal lobe,[3] or abuse of alcohol or other psychoactive substances.[4][5]
EDS may affect children or adults.[6][7][8]
EDS has been successfully controlled in clinical trials using prescribed medications, including Carbamazepine[9][10], Ethosuximide[11], and Propranolol[12].
Intermittent explosive disorder (abbreviated IED) is a behavioral disorder characterized by extreme expressions of anger, often to the point of uncontrollable rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand. It is currently categorized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as an impulse control disorder. IED belongs to the larger family of Axis I impulse control disorders listed in the DSM-IV-TR, along with kleptomania, pyromania, pathological gambling, and others.[1] Impulsive aggression is unpremeditated, and is defined by a disproportionate reaction to any provocation, real or perceived. Some individuals have reported affective changes prior to an outburst (e.g., tension, mood changes, energy changes, etc.).[2]
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression or winter blues, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter or, less frequently, in the summer,[1] spring or autumn, repeatedly, year after year. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), SAD is not a unique mood disorder, but is "a specifier of major depression".[2]
The affective spectrum is a grouping of related psychiatric and medical disorders which may accompany bipolar, unipolar, and schizoaffective disorders at statistically higher rates than would normally be expected. These disorders are identified by a common positive response to the same types of pharmacologic treatments. They also aggregate strongly in families and may therefore share common heritable underlying physiologic anomalies.
Burton himself
states that “Gentiles, Mahometans, Jews, Christians; and in them, Heretics old and new,
Schismatics, Schoolmen, Prophets, Enthusiasts...” (3: 346) are particularly susceptible to
religious melancholy, and claims that among the symptoms of religious melancholy are:
…an extraordinary love and affection they bear and show to such as are of their
own sect and … hate to such as are opposite in religion, as they call it, or disagree
from them in their superstitious rites, blind zeal (which is as much a symptom as a
cause), vain fears, blind obedience, needless works, incredibilities, impossibilities,
monstrous rites and ceremonies, wilfulness, blindness, obstinacy, etc. (3: 347-48)
Burton goes on to denounce practitioners of superstition and religious narrowmindedness
as being in league with dark forces: “the devil … doth so combine and glue
together his superstitious followers in love and affection, that they will live and die
together: and what an innate hatred hath he still inspired to any other superstition
opposite!” (3: 348).
Therefore, Burton states that, far from being somewhat healthy mild
zealotry, religious melancholy is, indeed, not merely impious but utterly irreligious.
Tommaso Garzoni’s The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles:
[Among the] humours of melancholy, the Phisitions place a kinde of madnes by
the Greeks called Lycanthropia, termed by the Latines Insania Lupina; or wolues
furie…melancholike persons of this kind, haue pale faces, soaked and hollow
eies, with a weake sight, neuer shedding one teare to the view of the worlde, a
drie toong, extreme thirst, and they want spittle and moisture exceedingly. (19)
Babb writes, “The grimmest form of melancholia is lycanthropia, the wolf
madness” (44)
This aptly describes the odd behavior shown in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi by
Ferdinand, who, driven mad by guilt for having his sister killed, lapses into melancholic
“lycanthropia,” as described symptomatically by the Doctor toward the end of the play:
In those that are possessed with ‘t there o’erflows
Such melancholy humor, they imagine
Themselves to be transformèd into wolves;
Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night,
And dig dead bodies up….
(V.ii.8-12)
It is interesting to note that, contrary to Michael J. Fox movies and others of that ilk,
which portray the affliction via sharpened eyeteeth and a bit of follicular silliness,
lycanthropy is naught but an illusion on the part of its victim due to melancholy, which
appears to be at the root of many Renaissance ailments, including leprosy and cancer.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “What
makes you think she’s a witch?” “Well, she turned me into a newt!” “A newt?” “…I got
better.”
Abû Ma’sar in his Introduction to Astrology, Saturn the god is “cold, dry, bitter, black,
Jeffus 10
dark, violent, and harsh…” and “presides over…avarice and bitter poverty…over
blindness, corruption, hatred, guile, craftiness, fraud, disloyalty, harmfulness (or harm),”
In “Il Penseroso,” Milton begins by denouncing happiness as superficial and
duplicitous, mere bastard spawn of foolishness, “…vain deluding joys, / The brood of
folly without father bred” (1-2), then praises the goddess of Melancholy (appropriately,
the daughter of Saturn) in adulatory apostrophe: “Hail divinest Melancholy, / Whose
saintly visage is too bright / To hit the Sense of human sight; / And therefore to our
weaker view, / O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue” (12-16).
The Duchess of Malfi: “The Cardinal …
archvillain of the play, is ‘a mellancholly Churchman’ who ‘laies [wicked] plots’…” (qtd.
in Babb 89). Although many characters in Malfi possess melancholy to some degree,
including the Cardinal and Ferdinand (as mentioned before), Webster’s character Bosola
is the malcontent epitomised. Bosola possesses a naturally ireful and discontented
melancholy even before he is thrown into the galleys, and his gifts cast aside, allowing
his resentment and hatred to fester like a cancer within him; furthermore, as stated in the
play by Antonio, intellectual neglect breeds melancholy and causes the soul itself to rust:
…He’s very valiant. This foul melancholy
Will poison all his goodness; for, I’ll tell you
If too immoderate sleep be truly said
To be an inward rust unto the soul,
It then doth follow want of action
Breeds all black malcontents….
(I.i.69-74)