Disease transmission

[cameoflage]

Setting: Steampunk; some of the technology is more advanced, but for the most part it's equivalent to somewhere around the late 19th century

Comments

[catbrooks]

Rabies says no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#Transmission_and_symptoms
I thought immediately of rabies because of "through bite" and it doesn't mention sexual transmission at all, just saliva and mucus.

[catbrooks]

Er, I mean "rabies says yes, it is medically possible"

[trackstar99]

I think your best bet is to have virus that produces the symptoms you desire-a non-viral parasite is also possible, but would require more in the way of explanation. Since the technology is not quite Bev Crusher level apparently, you don't need to explain all the nuances of it for your plot, it seems. Your characters' understand, that is, may be very limited of the pathology at hand but they still could realise that it's transmitted through certain fluids. One idea is that the virus lives in the mouth-perhaps in the gingival fluid-and is only at levels of viral load high enough for transmission via the oral route.

[st_aurafina]

The shapeshifting aspect of lycanthropy might give you an out here - it might be that the virus (or however you're describing the contagion) is only shed when the person is in wolf-form. The reason could something anatomical about salivary glands in your beastie, or something about the make-up of the contagion itself. Think about diseases like herpes, that are more likely to be spread when there are open lesions

[areteus]

It could be a genetic abmormality, a simple dominant/recessive gene. If the lyncathrope is LL (double dominant) while the person having sex is Ll (dominant recessive) then the offspring have a good chance of being lycanthropes as well (25% following classic Mendelian genetics) and most of the offspring will be potential carriers. You can link the onset of the 'disease' to an environmental trigger such as puberty

[ghymoreid]

Specific enzyme transfer might work? I read somewhere (please research this for yourself, I could have been reading research that's a few years out of date) that when a fiddleback bites for prey purposes, its venom lacks the enzyme that causes the flesh-eating symptoms often seen in humans ... if little arachnids can do that, surely a honking great werewolf would be able to control when to put the special little "something" in their saliva that would turn the bitee into another honking great werewolf ...