While this book is about TB, not rabies, it was a passage about Louis Pasteur that gave the idea for "La Rage":
"...nineteen illiterate moujiks from Smolensk in Russia who had been savaged by a rabid wolf eighteen days earlier--too long a time-lapse in Pasteur's own estimation for the vaccine to be effective--were sent by their Little Father, the Tsar, to Paris to be treated by Pasteur's team..."
Something about this made me think a rabies/werewolf connection would be fun to explore, so I did some surfing around the internet to see if this was already a well-worn idea. Not surprisingly, I wasn't the first to notice a similarity between the symptoms of full-blown rabies and the reputed behavior of werewolves. Somewhere out there in internet land, I stumbled across a reference to the book below (thank you, unrecollected webmaster; I pass this reference forward).
Witchcraft, Lycanthropy, Drugs, and Disease: An Anthropological Study of the European Witch-Hunts by H. Sidky. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. New York (1997). ISBN 0-8204-3354-3
This book is a fascinating exploration of the witch (and by extension, werewolf) persecutions of 15th, 16th, and 17th century Europe. The blurb on the back cover summarizes far better than I can:
"The approach taken is anthropological; inferences are grounded on a wide spectrum of variables, ranging from the political and ideological practices used to mystify early affairs, to the logical structure of witch-beliefs, torture technology, and the role of psychotropic drugs and epidemic diseases."
As the author points out, normal, healthy wolves rarely attack humans, but rapid wolves do. Rabid canines, as they succumb to the "furious" form of the disease, become increasingly excitable and vicious--likely to bite anything encountered, be it animal, human, or inanimate object. And, of course, bites from rabid wolves can transmit rabies to humans. Like rabid wolves, rabid humans can develop "hyperactivity consist[ing] of periods of agitation, thrashing, running, biting, or other bizarre behavior...Many victims of rabies are reported to rage in delirium, howl like wolves in their agony, go into violent frenzies, and attack and bite those around them..."
Interestingly, the book also notes temporal and geographical correlations between werewolf trials in Europe and rabies epizootics.
Patrice Debré's biography of Louis Pasteur, is a detailed, scholarly, and nonetheless thoroughly readable story of one of bio-medicine's giants. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the history of medicine and/or biological sciences. To make a long story short: "...Pasteur revolutionized the science of his era by discovering the germs and their role..."
I won't try to enumerate all of his accomplishments here, but rather just note that before he took on rabies, he studied anthrax. He isolated and characterized Bacillis anthracis, and demonstrated how earthworms carried anthrax spores from the buried carcasses of diseased animals to the surface soil where more animals could become infected.
As for Pasteur's work with rabies, I've written a brief summary to accompany "La Rage" on the Extremes 5 CD-Rom, so I won't repeat all the same information here. I'll just say that Pasteur's procedures for culturing the disease in living animals, for producing batches of vaccine, and for treating patients were essentially as depicted in the story. Many of the events in the story were lifted from history; I'll leave it to you to guess which incidents are more fanciful in nature. The character of Michel was very loosely modeled on Joseph Meister, the first patient to receive a full series of Pasteur's vaccine--the first person to be cured. Joseph was only nine years old at the time of treatment, but Pasteur continued the connection, later hiring the adult Joseph as a guard for the Institut Pasteur.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC); rabies
Listed below are a few of the sources that provided me with inspiration and background information for "La Rage":
The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis by Thomas Dormandy. New York University Press. Washington Square, New York. 1999.
Louis Pasteur by Patrice Debré, translated by Elborg Forster. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore & London. (1994; translation published 1998). ISBN 0-8018-5808-9
For general information about rabies, including outbreaks, symptoms, and treatment check out the following: