Review by Laura Madsen
Really fascinating book. (In the
interest of full disclosure, I am a veterinarian and am slightly obsessed with
public health and infectious diseases!)
Rabies is virus which causes a
virtually 100% fatal neurologic disease in all mammals, including humans. Even
in the 21st century, over 50,000 people worldwide die of rabies every
year. It is a horrible death of alternating periods of lucidity and psychosis,
pain, fever, convulsions, hallucinations and hydrophobia (pathologic fear of
water).
Wasik and Murphy weave together a
history of rabies and civilization. Although many of the scary epidemic
infectious diseases of humans, including Ebola, West Nile, SARS, swine flu, and
hanta, are zoonotic (transmitted from animals), only rabies was known to be
zoonotic before humanity ever considered the existence of bacteria and viruses.
Think of bubonic plague (“The Black Death”): people didn’t realize it was caused
by a bacterium spread by the bite of a rat flea. But rabies: slobbering
psychotic dog bites human, human turns into slobbering psychotic animal. It was
obvious even four millennia ago that rabies was transmitted by animals,
particularly canines.
RABID looks at theories, preventatives and “cures” over the millennia
(the most effective preventative prior to vaccination was cauterizing the fresh
bite with a red hot poker); history (St. Hubert is the healer of rabies
sufferers); mythology (the slaver of Cerberus spreads both rabies and aconite);
connections of rabies to werewolf and vampire legends; the handful of
documented survivals of rabid humans; weird ideas that people have had to
prevent rabies in dogs (one theory suggested rabies spontaneously arose in dogs
due to sexual frustration and suggested prevention by creating “doggy
bordellos”); rabies in various species (l’enfant du diable = the devil’s child,
a skunk); history of canine mass killings in an attempt to stop epidemics; and
a recent rabies epidemic on the supposedly rabies-free island of Bali.
The most fascinating chapter
explains how Louis Pasteur developed the first rabies vaccine in the late
1800’s. In fifteen years of veterinary practice, I have never seen a case of
rabies and hope I never do. Pasteur (who is also the father of pasteurization
and food safety) maintained rabid animals in his lab, putting himself and his
staff at continual risk of gruesome death. By repeatedly transferring rabies
directly from one rabbit’s brain to another they developed a highly virulent
strain, and then to “tame” that strain to be a vaccine, they left the rabbit’s
spinal cord out to air-dry for a few days. Imagine how terrifying it must have
been for him to inject that dried-out rabid spinal cord into the young boy who
was the first test subject. The boy survived both the initial rabid bite and
the cure.
Recommended for anyone who likes
history, biography or medicine.
And a soapbox moment: Make sure
your dogs, cats and ferrets are current on their rabies immunizations, and
never approach an ill or strangely-behaving bat, skunk or raccoon.
Market: Adult non-fiction
Violence: descriptions of human
deaths from rabies, and mass killings of dogs
Language: none
Sensuality: descriptions of one of
the symptoms of rabies in humans, which is hypersexuality and involuntary
ejaculations
Adult themes: assorted gruesome
deaths, both human and animal
1 comment:
Whoa! This sounds creepy and interesting! My dad is a vet, too, and I'll bet he'd love this book (not that he's always attracted to creepy books, but since this is about rabies, it's right up his alley). Thanks for the review, Laura! Now I know what to get my dad for his birthday. :)
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