Into the Paranormal: Cures for Lycanthropy

Today, since I've been busy cleaning the past few days again because of my in-laws coming into town, I'm going to repost one of my favorite paranormal blogs I did at The Deadly Vixens. I remembered this post as I watched The Wolfman with Benecio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, which turned out to be different than I had expected, but still really good for what it was aiming for. But that's a blog for another day soon.

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Anyways, as I was looking at Wikipedia's entry Werewolf, I happened to see a section that said Remedies. I am a huge fan of werewolves. They are probably my top favorite of paranormal creatures. I have heard of some authors who have figured out ways to cure their vampires of vampirism, but not really anything about curing a werewolf of lycanthropy, or as Wikipedia says, werewolfism. So, let's take a look at a few of these "remedies."

First one of interest is from the Ancient Greeks and Romans. They believed that to cure a person of "werewolfism," you needed to get the person to the point of exhaustion by long and hard physical activities. They thought this because of the fact that werewolves supposedly were weakened after ravaging their prey.

My thought on that is it doesn't matter about making the person exhausted if they really are a werewolf because they'll just gain back some of that strength during their shift, and then they'll be just as likely to eat whoever happens to be on the menu. I haven't really heard of werewolves supposedly being weaker after killing their prey either. From the books I've read, they usually feel satiated and content, if not exhilirated, but not weak. Hmm...

The second is grouped together ones that pretty much fall into the same category. In medieval Europe, they believed there were three ways of curing one of "werewolfism." Those ways were medicinally, surgically, or by an exorcism. The cures performed by their doctors mostly were fatal. Some Sicilians believed that you could cure the werewolf by hitting it on the forehead or scalp with a knife, while others thought you needed to pierce the werewolf's hands with nails.

A lot of those sound very painful. The fact that medieval Europe believed lycanthropy/werewolfism could be cured surgically boggles my mind. Perhaps those fatal "cures" weren't really intended to help the victim, but instead to kill the victim so that they wouldn't have to bother with him anymore. Poor wolfie. The Sicilian beliefs were a bit odd as well, especially if, oops! that wasn't really a werewolf. It was just a normal human. Ouch!

The third and final group are the less extreme ones. In lowland Germany, they believed that if you addressed the werewolf by its Christian name three times that it would be cured. And a Danish belief is that if you simply scold the werewolf that it would be cured.

These "cures" I wouldn't want to perform in front of the werewolf when he's in wolf form and about to attack. I think if the person really was a werewolf that they'd eat you just for trying them, but then again, that might just be me. It's good that some didn't go for a violent approach to curing werewolves, but these seem least likely to work. What do you think?

Let me know which group you think would be most likely to cure a werewolf, if any. If you don't think they would work, tell me ways you've heard of to cure werewolves, or if you have read a novel that has dealt with trying to cure a werewolf. *smiles*