In old, old legends werewolves would be men, but sometimes women, who are extremely hairy with a partly human face and a partly wolfish face with fanged teeth. Were such stories simply myths?
There is a medical condition called Hypertrichosis (also called Ambras Syndrome) whereby there is an abnormal amount of hair growth over the body not including the areas where hair is normally found in abundance as the top of the head, armpits, groin, etc. One form of Hypertrichosis is called the “werewolf syndrome” in which there is such excessive hair growth over the body that people literally look like werewolves. This very hair growth disease can be present at birth(congenital) or become apparent later on in life.
Click on to “images of hypertrichosis” on the internet and be amazed of pictures of young people who have the werewolf syndrome.
The first recorded case of the Hypertrichosis was Petrus Gonsalvus (Spanish Pedro Gonzalez. c.1537-c.1618) who was born in Tenerife. Tenerife is the largest and most populated island of the seven Canary Islands. The Italian naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi(1522-1605), the motivator behind Bologna’s botanical garden, one of the first in Europe, called Petrus Gonsalvus “the man of the woods”. Gonsalvus was a nobleman who lived among royalty. His life is very well documented. He went to the Court of Henry II, King of France in 1547 and from there to the Court of Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands. Petro Gonzalez married there a woman who was known as Lady Catherine.
Later they moved into the Court of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. Four of his children were stricken with the hairy disease. The marriage of Petro Gonsalvus and Lady Catherine is believed to have partially inspired the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast by the French novelist Gabrielle- Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Americaine et les contes marins(The Young American and Marine Tales).
There are a number of paintings of the werewolf looking Petro Gonzalez, Catherine the wife, and the 4 excessively hairy children.
Other famous “werewolves” throughout time include Julia Pastrana(1834-1860), travelled throughout the USA in a freak show. Supattrn Sasupan, a girl born August 5, 2000 in Thailand, Alice E. Doherty (1887-1933) born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and toured with a freak show.There is also Jesus “Chufy” Aceves of Mexico who performs for the public. In the 1820’s there was The Hairy Family of Burma; the family of Shwe-Maong. Other famous werewolves, past and present, are on the internet.
In the cases of people having fangs for teeth, like werewolves and vampires, it is possible that people who, from old age had many teeth decay then fall out, that to use dentures to chew food, a small number of people extracted the teeth of animals they killed, such as wolves, cleaned the teeth, applied adhesive, and at times wore these canine teeth as dentures. Of course, wearing dentures that look like human teeth would have became much preferred to wearing animal teeth dentures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis
Danny Ramos Gomez – a real Wolfman:
Images of hypertrichosis bing.com/images
