Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/194

182 relates that at Crema, Italy, in 1804, a mad wolf descended from the mountains and bit not only a vast number of animals, but thirteen persons besides, of whom nine perished of hydrophobia. This peculiar audacity of the rabid wolf, and the fact that a human being suffering from the disease often imagines himself personally identified in some manner with the animal that bit him, were doubtless largely concerned in the maintenance of this superstition at a period when, as Lecky observes, the air was surcharged with the supernatural. But, in fact, this fable may be traced back to mythological ages, and the existence of the "were-wolf" has been attested by Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo, Virgil, Ovid, and other ancient authors. Most of us remember the story recounted in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who entertained Jupiter with human flesh, in order to prove his omniscience, and was punished by having all of his sons, save one, and himself, transformed into wolves:

 In vain he attempted to speak; from that very instant His jaws were bespattered with foam, and he only thirsted For blood as he ranged among flocks and panted for slaughter."

There are probably few countries in the world where some form of this superstition has not existed, but it has raged especially in places infested with wolves—in the Jura, in Russia, in Ireland (where, according to Camden, the inhabitants of Ossory were said to become wolves every seven years), in the wooded districts of Germany, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey—regions where lupine madness has been particularly prevalent. Olaus Magnus, a writer of the middle ages, relates that in Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the inhabitants suffered much from the ravages of wolves among their cattle, they regarded such inroads as of little consequence compared with the ferocious attacks of were-wolves. He says, "On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such a multitude of wolves transformed from men gathered together in a certain spot, arranged among themselves, and then spread to. range with wondrous ferocity against human beings and those animals which are not wild." Fincelius informs us that, in 1542, there were such a great number of Were-wolves about Constantinople that a special expedition was organized against them, and the sultan, accompanied by his guard, left the city and slew one hundred and fifty. A French judge, named Boguet, about the end of the sixteenth century, devoted himself especially to lycanthropes, of whom he burnt a multitude, and afterward wrote a treatise on the subject.

Among the stupid popular ideas prevailing at the present time with regard to a mad dog is the belief that persons, who may have been bitten by the animal a long time previously and when it was healthy, are in danger of developing hydrophobia upon its subsequent appearance in the dog. This notion would seem almost too ridiculous