Medical Monsters: New and Old Conceptions of Lycanthropy in Early Modern Italian Medical Literature

Throughout the Renaissance, Italian physicians engaged with the ancient concept of lycanthropy in the context of ongoing witchcraft and werewolf trials. Physicians attested to the veracity of the illness of lycanthropy, including exempla of both their existence and attempts to cure them from their monstrous state in their praticae, even when the disease was notably uncommon. Often written about in parallel with other mental illnesses, lycanthropes were supposed to be suffering from a “most terrible” disease in which the victim was compelled into wolf-like behavior through excessive melancholic humors. In order to comprehend werewolves from a medical perspective, physicians blended early modern medical theory, ancient myth, and contemporary cases in their analyses of lycanthropes. Through the examination of medical treatises written by Italian physicians, such as Girolamo Mercuriale, Gaspare Marcucci, and Donato Antonio Altomare, this paper considers how medical experts bolstered Renaissance conceptions of werewolves by embedding the discussion of the monstrous alongside simultaneous concern for proper mental healthcare. A rare illness, lycanthropy allowed for physicians to engage with contemporary questions around bodily and mental function while ambiguously participating in larger cultural debates held across the fields of medicine, law, and theology. By including this rare illness in medical texts, Renaissance medical experts promoted wonder in readers at the multiplicity and extremity of disorders that these physicians could cure, including monstrous problems.