Man�s transformative intimacy with the feral creatures of the fields probably predates the art of writing and so one must rely heavily upon the legends and ancient mythologies to tell us something about...

Man�s transformative intimacy with the feral creatures of the fields probably predates the art of writing and so one must rely heavily upon the legends and ancient mythologies to tell us something about such a possible relationship.

We encounter, in Greek myths, Pasiphae, daughter of the union of Helios and Perse. She was given in marriage to Minos, king of Crete; and she bore him six conventional children, including Ariadne. But she had greatly displeased Poseidon who then placed a terrible curse upon her such that she experienced an insatiable lust to mate with a bull; and from such an unnatural union came the Minotaur, the mythic creature with the body of a man but the head of a bull. Both Virgil (70-19 BCE) and Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE) took sorrowful note of this event.

The delusional state of believing that one is transformed into a lower animal, either in feeling or in actual metamorphosis, is called zoanthropy. Lycanthropy is the commonest form of this rare psychosis, the illusion that one has become a wolf (werewolf). There was Lycaon, for example, legendary king of Arcadia, who had been transformed into a ravenous wolf by a vindictive Zeus.

And the etiology of lycanthropy? In most ancient tales it was the consequence of a terrible curse placed upon the victim.

The secular physicians of the Middle Ages agreed that a vengeful malediction was the commonest cause, but thought that certain toxic herbs may, alternatively, cause the malady. They surmised that lycanthropy might be only a transformative hallucination; or, in more serious cases, a reversion to feral behavior and the transformation of the victim�s face and mouth to a more primitive form; and they concluded, too, that the transformation to a wolf might be temporary or permanent depending upon the wording of the curse.

In �Gulliver�s Travels,� too, we witness zoanthropy in the Houyhnhnms.

Almost three millennia ago, there was Nebachadnezzar II (c. 634-562 BCE), warrior-ruler of Chaldean Babylon. For 43 contentious years, he was sovereign of a strife-filled nation. He captured Jerusalem in 597 BCE, turned Judah into a vassal state and exiled its resident Jews to the distant plains of Mesopotamia. The Bible refers to Nebachadnezzar many times, particularly in the Book of Daniel; and in the world of grand opera, he was known as Nabucco.

In his later years, the Bible relates, Nebachadnezzar dreamed an unsettling dream of a mighty tree about to be hewn; and so he then sought among his courtiers for someone to interpret the dream�s cryptic passages.

Finding no meaningful responses, he turned to Daniel. But the interpretations by Daniel were not to his liking; for he heard: �Let your heart be changed from man�s, and let a beast�s heart be given unto you; and let seven years pass over you.� And further, �They shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen.�

For seven years Nebachadnezzar remained demented. But at the end of these seven years, Nebachadnezzar lifted up his eyes to the heavens and his understanding returned.

Physicians had called this delusional form of insanity, boanthropy, and by the 19th century some medical texts in England were citing cases of this form of madness, occasionally embellishing its clinical details with notations of sparks emanating from the victim�s mouth when he chewed his cud. Psychiatric texts also recorded other manifestations of zoanthropy, including patients who thought that they were hyenas, horses, or even frogs. Learned physicians believed that this form of dysmorphia was remotely akin to bipolar disorders and hence found a new generic name for these delusions: species dysphoria.

Clinical zoanthropy might have then retreated to the realm of medical marginalia were it not for its resurrection, in England, during the last decade of the 18th century.

In 1792, Edward Jenner applied pus derived from cows afflicted with cowpox to the arms of children as a means of protecting them when they might encounter the virus of smallpox. Many physicians, as well as members of the clergy, condemned this prophylactic therapy � called vaccination � as a heretical affront to our Creator and a sure means of transforming scores of innocent children into hybrid creatures with the body profile of cows.

And so, the greatest lifesaving device ever offered by the medical profession was deemed by some as a satanic artifice and by others as the agent to transform innocent children into a herd of subhuman beasts.

Through the agency of mass vaccination, the scourge of smallpox was made extinct in the year 1978. Zoanthropy, however, prevails in the fears of those who willfully disregard reality.

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Stanley M. Aronson, M.D. (smamd@cox.net), a weekly contributor, is dean of medicine emeritus at Brown University.