Rabies is the model and the key to rage

Rabies is the model and the key to rage

The link connecting the animal counterparts of vampires and werewolves is exactly infection by the rabies virus.  This suggests that the behavior of rabid bats and wolves is very similar to characteristics of vampires and werewolves.  A seemingly straight-forward task is to list characteristics of a natural phenomenon, rabid animals, and determine how many are in common with both infected humans and with our legendary creatures.  Three factors will limit the information we can gather from naturally rabies-infected animals. 

The first limitation is the long and variable period of time from exposure from rabies to actual infection and concomitant behavioral effects.  In general, the pre-infection period lasts a few weeks to a month.  However, documented cases involving humans indicates that the period can be as long as a couple of years from exposure (bite, or organ transplant) to signs of infection and death.  And, prior to blatant infection with its overt characteristics, there are no known signs of impending disease.  Although bites by bats and wolves became associated with the subsequent occurrence of rabidity centuries ago, it is easy to understand how the long, unpredictable period between exposure and overt disease led our ancestors to associate rabidity with a more contemporary supernatural intervention rather than a long-forgotten bite.  In particular, the bite of a bat can be slight enough as to be overlooked and therefore no natural cause for disease may be evident when symptoms appear.  Only been the advent of modern forensic medical practice, with acceptance of, and tools to detect, bacteria and viruses, that searches diligently for just such a biological cause has been able to document rabies as an underlying mechanism .  Of course, discovering a biological cause is supposed to lead to prevention, medical treatment, and understanding of the disease.  With rabies, much of that is still only a dream.

Another limitation to the study of naturally occurring rabies infection is the brief amount of time from actual infection to death, two weeks at most.  This doesn't allow much time to observe behavioral and physiological symptoms, to put them through the battery of sophisticated tests that TV’s Dr. House would apply.  Worse, the infected animal/patient is trying to attack the observers (threatening to turn them) or is trying to escape, all while rapidly deteriorating toward death.

A third limitation is that the symptoms of rabies infections come in two flavors, furious or encephalitic rabies with its rage and attacks, and dumb or paralytic rabies primarily characterized by muscle weakness and ataxia.  These signs are not mutually exclusive, infected animals often exhibit signs of both, and muscle weakness is very often seen at the end-stage of both types.  Although we only know of one rabies virus, these different sequelae complicate that chance that one explanation, one disease, can suffice to account for what we know about it.  For our present purposes we will focus on furious rabies, always aware that we must combine the two forms under one explanation at some time.