it's rabies, plain as the claws on your paws

Authors before me have hypothesized that rabies is at the root of werewolves and vampires.  Certainly many of the modern tales at least allude to a viral infection.  Specifically, Dr. Gomez-Alonso published a report (Neurology, 1998, 51:856-9.) drawing the link between rabies infection and the vampire legends.  He proposed “that rabies may have played a key role in the development of the vampire legend, given the coincident time of the phenomena and the striking similarities between them.”

Ian Woodward in his comprehensive analysis The Werewolf Delusion states “But I have no doubt that, because of the shared symptoms, a vast proportion of history’s dreaded “werewolves” were in fact either rabid wolves or their rabid human victims.  The facts seem to speak for themselves” (p. 168).

Yet, some authors discount this connection, although still noting the similarity over and over.  Most recently the book Rabid sought to sever the link.  Rabid is a wonderful compilation of information about rabies and other zoonotic diseases.  The authors give a number of reasons why rabies does not produce vampires and werewolves.  One possible anomaly is that vampires and werewolves can give long accounts of their behavior, seemingly in contrast to the short lifespan of the infected individual.  Yet, only a few pages earlier they note the case of Charles Lennox, governor-general of Canada in 1819.  He was bitten by a fox and contracted rabies.  He became lucid at various times during his madness, in one case dictating “a lengthy letter to his eldest daughter” (p.10).  And later, discussing the possibility that Edgar Allen Poe died from rabies, they again state “Rabies sufferers, by contrast, are prone to just these sorts of swings between delirium and lucidity” (p.108). As these authors note, this cycling is a notable, and perhaps one of the most heart-wrenching, aspects of rabies infection.  A person with rabies will have periods when they are fully aware of what’s been happening to them, and fully aware of what’s to become of them! 

It also seems to the authors of Rabid and many other investigators that the fact that victims of rabies infection die quickly once symptoms appear is at odds with the longevity of some imprisoned self-confessed vampires and werewolves.  However, not one of those self-confessed monsters turned into a vampire or werewolf while in the presence of authorities.  These people were certainly mentally ill, but they were not true vampires or werewolves, and they did not have rabies.  Moreover, especially in times before hospitals patients would have been treated at home.  As noted, many victims of rabies do, at times, understand what their fate will be and the danger they pose to family and friends.  This knowledge, coupled with rabies’s urges for the victim to escape any confines (real or apparent) and to roam resulted in many victims running away, into the forest, from which they might never be seen again.  Who’s to say they died… although almost certainly they did die from the rabies itself or from a foolish encounter with another predator.

Tuberculosis and porphyria are two other disorders often tried to be linked with vampires (but not werewolves).  In the case of tuberculosis the link is really to revenants with their sickly, ghostly appearance.  There is no room for werewolves, nor vampires, in this scenario. 

Nor does porphyria explain the primary behaviors of vampires and werewolves, that is, rage and blood-lust.  Porphyria produces a hypersensitivity to sunburn and therefore a healthy avoidance of direct sunlight.  This simply doesn’t compare with the active startle and apparent fearfulness of bright light, and sounds, associated with vampires and werewolves, and very prominent in people infected with rabies.  Porphyria may have provided people with the hope of a defense against vampires - that they would burn up in sunlight - but the message certainly didn’t get across to rabid bats and wolves (and beavers) that are notable for being seen openly during the daylight that they normally avoid.

There really is no doubt that rabies infection is the model for the behavior of vampires and werewolves.  Whether true vampires and werewolves exist may be another story, but it is clear that their behavior closely mimics that of rabies infection as well.  More intriguing, more frightening, and truly more hopeful, is that rabies infection allows us to understand that this behavior is a normal aspect of every human being – we each carry our own vampire and werewolf inside our own brains, and in some of us, they come out to romp at times of their own choosing.  This realization gives us hope to understand, and when necessary to treat our inner monsters.  That rabies infection is linked to our legends is very satisfying, but it is the fact that rabies draws out, in a consistent and predictable way, the set of rage behaviors that otherwise seem to be the work of some supernatural, at least subconscious, power over which we have no control.  We need to understand the workings of the rabies virus because then we will be able to obtain control, and understanding, of all that it means to be completely human.