# Source note — werewolves, lycanthropy and old medical books

Published: 2026-08-16

## User lead

Instagram Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db6US7KSYyw/?igsh=MXFtdmlyd3cwNDI3bQ==

## Captured source

Account: Patrick’s Rare Books / `patricks_rarebooks`. Caption: “What else is being hidden from us? Read antiquarian books to find out! We’ll help you build your home library.” Hashtags include `#werewolf`, `#history`, `#learn`, `#bookstagram`.

`yt-dlp` could access Instagram JSON setup but returned `Instagram sent an empty media response`; browser playback was visible, so the claim was recovered through page metadata and frame OCR rather than a full MP4 transcript.

## Recovered Reel claim stack

- “They’re erasing these from history!”
- The presenter describes a “1750 edition of a history of physic,” explaining physic as medicine.
- The subtitle says the book “includes a chapter on werewolves.”
- The subtitle says werewolves were a “pretty common topic in medical books all the way up…”
- Final hook: “They are deleting the werewolves.”

## Source support gathered

- Wellcome Collection catalogue search for lycanthropy: results include books, archives/manuscripts, dissertations and a subject lane for “Medicine - Early works to 1800.”
- Wellcome listing for Claude Prieur’s 1596 *Dialogue de la lycanthropie ou transformation d’hommes en loups*.
- Wellcome listings for premodern lycanthropy, witchcraft/lycanthropy/drugs/disease, and female werewolf cultural history.
- PubMed and PMC search captures for clinical lycanthropy; PubMed returned 18 results.
- Public background sources on werewolf witch trials and Peter Stumpp.
- Project Gutenberg text of Sabine Baring-Gould’s 1865 *The Book of Were-Wolves*.

## Editorial finding

The narrow historical kernel is real: lycanthropy and werewolf belief are not absent from the record. They appear in folklore, trials, learned demonological debates, early medical rationalizations and modern psychiatric case literature.

The overreach is the “deleting the werewolves” frame. The topic is not deleted; it is catalogued and searchable. Old medical/folklore discussion supports the history of belief and diagnosis — not literal proof of human-to-wolf shapeshifting.

## Caveat on the exact 1750 book

The Reel’s subtitles identify a 1750 “history of physic” / medicine-history volume and say it includes a chapter on werewolves. In this pass, the exact volume/page was not independently matched to a public scan. Managing Expectations therefore labels that as a recovered Reel claim, not a verified scan quote.