History / folklore / medical history · August 16, 2026

Werewolves, lycanthropy and old medical books: history, folklore and the “deleted werewolves” claim

An Instagram Reel uses an old medical-history book to suggest werewolves are being deleted from history. The useful answer is more interesting: lycanthropy is in the record, but that record points to belief, trial culture, medical rationalization and rare psychiatric literature — not proven shapeshifting.

Managing Expectations source-card: werewolves and lycanthropy

Bottom line: Werewolves are not being erased. Lycanthropy is preserved in catalogues, folklore studies, early-modern trial history, public-domain books and medical literature. The unsupported leap is treating those records as proof that literal werewolf creatures existed.

What the Reel claims

The Reel from Patrick’s Rare Books says “They’re erasing these from history,” shows/mentions a 1750 “history of physic” — meaning medicine — says it contains a chapter on werewolves, and ends with “They are deleting the werewolves.” Instagram blocked direct video extraction, so Managing Expectations recovered the claim stack from visible page metadata and frame OCR.

Claim table

Claim	Evidence label	Finding
The Instagram Reel exists and is from Patrick’s Rare Books.	Confirmed source item	Instagram metadata/page text show account patricks_rarebooks, the caption, hashtags, engagement counts and date context.
The Reel says “They’re erasing these from history” and ends “They are deleting the werewolves.”	Recovered from visible frames	Browser frame OCR captured the hook and closing line.
The presenter says a 1750 “history of physick” / history-of-medicine book includes a chapter on werewolves.	Visible Reel claim; exact page not independently verified here	The Reel subtitles say this, but direct Instagram MP4 extraction failed and a public scan/catalogue match for the exact 1750 volume was not recovered in this pass.
Werewolves/lycanthropy appear in historical learned and medical contexts.	Supported	Wellcome catalogue results include lycanthropy works, a 1596 Dialogue de la lycanthropie, and “Medicine - Early works to 1800” as a related subject in the lycanthropy search.
Werewolf accusations were part of late-medieval/early-modern witch-trial culture.	Supported historical context	Background sources describe werewolf-witch trials peaking in parts of Europe during the 16th–17th centuries, with cases such as Peter Stumpp and Gilles Garnier.
Medical writers sometimes treated lycanthropy as melancholy/mental disturbance rather than literal shapeshifting.	Supported	Modern clinical-lycanthropy summaries cite older medical explanations including melancholia/black bile and Johann Weyer’s humoural framing.
Clinical lycanthropy remains a psychiatric term in modern literature.	Verified medical-literature anchor	PubMed search returned 18 results; sources include systematic reviews and case reports on clinical lycanthropy / zoanthropy.
Old medical/folklore discussion proves literal werewolf creatures existed.	Not proven	The record supports beliefs, accusations, trials, folklore and psychiatric/medical categories — not verified physical human-to-wolf transformation.
Werewolves are being “deleted” from history.	Unsupported/conspiracy framing	The material is not deleted: Wellcome, Project Gutenberg, PubMed/PMC and public encyclopedic/court-history sources preserve werewolf/lycanthropy records.

What is actually true

Werewolf belief is historical. It appears in folklore, learned writing and early-modern courts.
Werewolf trials were real legal events. That means people were accused, tried, tortured or executed — not that transformation occurred.
Lycanthropy crossed into medicine. Some physicians/rationalizers treated it as melancholy, delusion or bodily/mental disturbance.
Clinical lycanthropy is a modern psychiatric term. PubMed indexes case reports and reviews on people who believe they are transforming into animals.

What is not proven

No public source checked here proves literal human-to-wolf transformation.
No source checked here proves a coordinated campaign to delete werewolves from history.
The exact 1750 book/page shown in the Reel was not independently matched to a public scan in this pass.

Source package

Evidence label

Preserved history; unsupported deletion/literal-creature leap. Old books can absolutely preserve strange forgotten categories. But the disciplined conclusion is that werewolves belong to folklore, legal persecution history, demonological belief and medical/psychiatric history — not confirmed zoology.