The Wolf of Sahneh

The night was dreadfully hot in the tiny village of Sahneh on the road from Teheran to Baghdad and Damascus. Around the solitary gasoline station and several inns, truck-driver counterparts of Scheherezade's cameleers slept in the open, and townspeople flung wide their doors. About i a.m. a gaunt wolf swept down from the mountains like an Assyrian on the fold and attacked sleeping Sahneh. The beast loped lightly over the low mud walls and slashed at sleeping villagers around the scattered huts on the out skirts. The wolf went for the head, as is the way of wolves, and in two hours found 13 victims.

As the countryside came to life with urgent Iranian cries and the lighting of torches, the wolf raced into the village proper. By dawn there were 16 more victims. At last, the animal was killed by a peasant armed with a mattock.

The Acid Test. Though it seemed incredible on that hot night 18 months ago, the beast was performing probably wolf's greatest service to man since the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. The wolf of Sahneh was rabid, and his appearance was just what a World Health Organization team had been waiting for. If it gets a chance to develop, rabies is invariably fatal. Ever since the days of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), doctors have been able to head off rabies with a series of 14 to 21 vaccinations, but the treatment is costly, painful--and sometimes fatal. A "hyper-immune serum." developed about ten years after Pasteur's vaccine from the blood of animals infected with rabies, was known to give passive, temporary immunity but there had never been a major test in humans. The WHO team, aware that rabid wolves are common in Iran, was ready to apply the searching test; the wolf of Sahneh supplied the opportunity.

Within a day 27 of the wolf's 29 victims were trucked into Teheran (the two others straggled in days later). They were promptly bled, so that any antibodies against rabies could be detected, and divided into five groups. Of the 18 bitten on the head, five got two shots of serum, four days apart, plus vaccine, six got one shot of serum plus vaccine, and five got vaccine alone. Of those bitten less severely elsewhere on the body, four got serum (one shot) plus vaccine, and six got vaccine only.

Special treatment was given to three, notably the most hideously bitten victim of all: Golam Khazayi, a boy of six, who had bites on the head too numerous to count. The wolf's massive jaws had chomped right through his skull, and the teeth, piercing the dura mater (parchment-like covering) had dripped rabies virus directly into the brain. Golam already had contracted meningitis through the head wounds. He got penicillin as well as a special course of serum every two days, plus vaccine.

Textbook Neatness. Of the five with head wounds who got only vaccine, three died. Of the 13 who got serum as well, only one died (and he had but a single shot of serum). Among the 25 who today are alive and healthy is Golam Khazayi. No other human being has survived so intimate a brush with rabies.

From frequent blood samples, the WHO team was able to report that no antibodies developed as a result of vaccination until the 19th day. Since 18 days is often enough time for the deadly rabies virus to make its way to the brain, the lesson of the Sahneh experiment was laid out with textbook neatness: the serum, with the readymade antibodies that it introduces into the system, can be a lifesaver. "This terrible disease," concluded the British Medical Journal this month, "is preventable by well-directed and vigorous measures."

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