DEGENEKACY OF MIND IN MAN. 15 



those that occur in ordinary European idiot children in our 

 idiot asylums. 



Animal-like idiots with quadrupedal habits were sufficiently 

 well known even in the time of Linnaeus c to justify him in 

 his curious identification of such individuals as additional 

 species of the genus homo. 9 He enumerates no less than 

 eleven such species, which included wild or wood boys or 

 girls found, or said to have been found, among wolves, bears, 

 wild sheep and oxen (Browne). 



Many comparisons have been drawn unfavourable to the 

 human idiot- -between his mental condition and that of the 

 dog, horse, and other animals. Thus Dr. Browne points out 

 the mental inferiority of the cretin to the horse, as illus- 

 trated by the one going round, the other stepping over, small 

 obstacles. Dr. Bucknill shows the psychical inferiority of 

 British idiots to the dog or horse ; and Dr. Hitchman their 

 resemblance, both physical and mental, to the anthropoid 

 apes. Hugh Miller drew a comparison between an idiot 

 not by any means of the worst type and the dog the 

 contrast being unfavourable to the idiot. Maudsley, too, 

 regards human idiots as inferior in intelligence to certain of 

 the lower animals. And indeed there can be no doubt of the 

 fact that intellectually and morally the human idiot is far 

 below many of the so-called ( lower ' animals. 



Among the occasional phenomena of human insanity, 

 even in the most highly civilised peoples, is the delusion 

 that the individual has been transformed into this or that 

 other animal, in which case the habits of the particular ani- 

 mal are assumed and imitated with wonderful, and frequently 

 dangerous, fidelity. Sometimes, moreover, such delusions 

 have become epidemic, affecting large bodies of people. Thus 

 one of the most noteworthy of the epidemics of the middle 

 ages was the singular were-woZ/'-madness, technically known 

 as lycanthropia. The human 'were-wolf,' the loup-garou of 

 France was common in the Jura about the years 1590 to 

 1600. This wolf-madness was simply an imitative form of 

 delusional insanity, which led its victims to betake them- 

 selves to the woods, and to adopt all the savage habits of the 

 wolf, including cannibalism. A minority of such delusionists 



