Bill WasikReseñas

Our Kindred Creatures is the history of a moral transformation, how society came to recognize the cruelty in how we treat our ‘dumb’ animals, with the hope that we will continue to implement protections as we become aware of the unseen cruelty behind the products we buy.

Between 1866 and 1896, the first crusaders organized animal protection groups and pushed for laws to prevent cruelty. These forgotten crusaders raised awareness of how horses were treated, the over-hunting of animals for sport or fashion, unneeded medical experiments, the abuse of circus animals, inhumane slaughterhouse practices, and the use of animals in deadly sports.

Civilization has come a long way since 1866 when Henry Bergh realized that cruelty to animals anethised humans to cruelty to each other. He began by challenging those who beat their horse on the streets. Today’s cruelty is behind the scenes, easy to ignore. But it exists, in puppy mills and factory farms. If we were aware of the suffering behind every glass of milk or pork chop we eat, it would quell our appetite. Additionally, the animals grown for consumption greatly impacts the climate crisis. And, the climate crisis and habitat destruction threatens wildlife.

This is a disturbing read, and unsettling. Chapters cover the slaughter of the buffalo, and the hunting of birds for fashionable hats, and the continuing controversy between medical science and antivivisectionists.

But it is also inspiring. We learn of the dedication of reformers who instituted the organizations to enforce animal protection laws and groups and publications that taught children kindness to animals.

I loved reading the story of Black Beauty, serialized in an American magazine, “Our Dumb Animals.” Told in the first person by Black Beauty, the novel follows his life from pleasant early years through the various owners and jobs he performs. He meets horses who tell of the pain of tail docking and rein checking, all for fashion. Anna Sewell had spent years writing the novel while suffering from ill health. She never lived to see her novel’s success. The book went on to be a bestseller.

It can be easy to be pessimistic about humans’ capacity for moral transformation. Social scientist often find, in interview with individual subjects, that no amount of reason and evidence will unsettle their instincts about right and wrong, even when those instincts manifestly result in prejudice or hatred toward others.

[…]Yet on large timescales…we know that moral change does happen, often at profound scale and remarkable speed.

from Our Kindred Creatures

Bergh’s idea that insensitivity to cruelty to animals fosters insensitivity to human beings can still be seen today in how we cage farm animals and how we have caged illegal immigrants.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Rabies is the deadliest disease known to humankind and is still almost 100% fatal. It has been terrifying people for as long as we have recorded history. In Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, Wasik and Murphy look at the history of rabies, the relationship between man and dog, the myths of werewolves and vampires, which might originate with rabies, the search for a vaccine, current treatment options, and hope for defanging rabies in the future throughout this thoroughly researched book. This can be slow and dry and there are quite a few extended digressions from the disease at hand. It was interesting enough to learn the method by which rabies sidesteps the human immune system and the ways in which it continues to spread around the world through unvaccinated dogs and in the US via bats. In an effort to make it accessible to a general audience, the authors didn't overwhelm the reader with a lot of technical science but that left them with less than a books' worth of information definitively about rabies. What is presented, and much of it is at best merely speculated to be connected to rabies, often incredibly tenuously, is almost entirely within the cultural sphere. That's unfortunate because the cultural history was not nearly as interesting as I'd hoped, even adding in information about zombies, wild (and ineffective) old time remedies, and ways in which rabies is depicted in books and movies among other things. You really have to be invested in rabies to find this an interesting read.½

This book wanders into some pretty meandering threads; to be expected given the narrowness of the subject. that being said, I feel like a bit of an expert on rabies now, with a passing knowledge of vampires & werewolves.½

When a human male contracts rabies, and he's in the final stages, he will experience multiple ejaculations, up to 30 times a day, due to the virus invading his nerve cells. Enough said.

I've long been fascinated with / horrified by rabies. This was a good treatment, pulling in some other thoughts about epidemiology throughout history.

Pretty much covers it from every angle! I found it fascinating and breezed through the audiobook.

Well, it's a book about rabies from a cultural perspective.

Good, but not great.

Interesting look at the history of rabies that touches on other diseases that come from animals. Rabies may be the origin of werewolf and vampire stories. Kind of dry in parts, but I think that's not uncommon in such a book.

I listened to the audiobook, and the audio quality in the last couple of parts was a bit dodgy. The sound quality would fluctuate, making it obvious where cuts and edits were done. At least, that's what I'm assuming the difference was.

Fascinating topic - but meh in the telling. I listened to this as an audiobook - the reader has a William Shatner-esque pause. The first half was a steady uphill slog. I found myself skimming just to get through it. The second half was better and it picked up as it moved along, but it was never so gripping that I could hear the Star Trek fight song in my head as I listened to the book. And it should have been gripping. It's the world's most deadly virus! I'd give it another half star if I could, but I can't - so three it is.

A surprisingly enthralling book on the history of rabies and the search for its cure. A lot of science, but not too much unfamiliar verbiage, etc. Just a fascinating story about an unlikely subject.

RABID: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST DIABOLICAL VIRUS


Rabies is apparently the most fatal virus known to science. It is a disease that is transmitted to humans from another species (such as dogs and bats), usually by a bite from an infected animal. The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death. For a human, rabies is almost 100% fatal if postexposure vaccines are not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms.

This book is literally a cultural history of rabies, spanning the last 4000 or so years of history, including anything from Homer's epics, cultural myths, zombies, vampires, werewolves, literature (both pulp fiction and the classics), movies, "causes and cures" as described by ancient philosophers and physicians, and some science. A great deal of emphasis is placed on the relationships between man and his dogs. The book contains a great deal of "cultural history", quite often of subjects only vaguely related to rabies, e.g. the 23 pages that summarize various vampire and werewolf novelizations and the 3 pages describing the life of Saint Hubert. I got the impression that the authors couldn't find enough information to write about rabies, so had to look for vaguely related material to add.

While having a great deal of information on the cultural aspects of rabies, I felt the book was lacking in the science section. I would have preferred more science and less rambling about Saint Hubert, vampires and werewolves. That said, the last third of the book that concentrated on developing a rabies vaccine, the possible methods to help those infected with the disease and the measures implemented in Bali to fight the disease, was rather interesting.

NOTE: This book is not for the squeamish or overly sensitive readers. Rabies "control" methods are often not very pleasant or good for the dogs involved.

Wasik, Bill & Monica Murphy (2012). Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus. London: Viking Penguin. 2012. ISBN 9781101583746. Pagine 287. 14,41 €

Ci sono libri che leggo, e cose che faccio, come una forma di cura violenta a mie paure e fobie. Sono stato nella selva amazzonica non soltanto per la curiosità di vedere un ambiente così interessante e così citato da molti libri e resoconti scientifici che avevo letto, da Claude Lévi-Strauss a Fitzcarraldo, ma anche per il terrore che leggendo quei libri e quei resoconti mi aveva ispirato quella natura così insidiosa e misteriosa (e vi assicuro che, per quanto ospite di un resort di lusso, la fauna di artropodi che ogni giorno e soprattutto ogni notte riusciva a entrare in camera era abbastanza impressionante). Lo stesso vale per la mia fascinazione per i libri e i film dell’orrore, anche se in quel caso sono abbastanza razionale da non avere realmente paura.

Ho sempre avuto un sacro terrore dei cani – anche se crescendo ho imparato a far buon viso a cattivo gioco e sono perfino capace di accarezzarli sulla testa, se la situazione sociale me lo impone – e ho anche sempre pensato che questa paura fosse giustificata: nella mia infanzia (parzialmente) campagnola i cani erano feroci cani da guardia, legati a una lunga catena; quando ti avvicinavi cominciavano a latrare come forsennati, correvano aggressivi verso di te per quanto la lunghezza della catena glielo consentiva e poi restavano lì, eretti sulle sole zampe posteriori, con il muso paonazzo e gli aguzzi denti in mostra, con un latrato se possibile ancora più terrificante per l’effetto strangolante della catena. Quelli un po’ più piccoli di taglia, che non erano considerati “da guardia” erano lasciati liberi di inseguirti per strada, quando passavi in bici, sempre abbaiando come ossessi e quei dentini bianchi pericolosamente vicini ai tuoi malleoli. Io pedalavo a più non posso con il cuore che batteva all’impazzata. E vi giuro che se ci fosse stato l’EPO e ne avessi conosciuto l’esistenza l’avrei assunto per scappare ancora più in fretta.

Della rabbia sapevo, ma non era al primo posto nelle mie paure. Le mie paure erano molto più elementari e primordiali: erano la paura del morso. Anzi, erano la paura della prospettiva, della possibilità stessa del morso. [Ma non è poi così per tutte le paure, anche per quella – la Ur-paura – della morte? Nonostante gli stupidi filosofi ti dicano che non la devi temere perché quando c'è lei tu non ci sei più, e quando ci sei tu lei non c'è ancora: ma c'è la sua prospettiva, la sua possibilità; ed è quella che ti terrorizza.]

Della rabbia sapevo anche che, se eri morso, dovevi fare una vaccinazione che – a differenza di quelle che si esaurivano in una pastiglia o uno zuccherino, o persino in un’iniezione o un taglietto – era lunga e dolorosa: una serie di iniezioni nella pancia.

Non sapevo, per fortuna, che se dopo il morso non vieni vaccinato o lo sei troppo tardi, la rabbia ti uccide tra atroci dolori, e soprattutto ti uccide sempre (i sopravvissuti sono così pochi e così discussi che questo è uno dei pochi casi in cui la terribile parola sempre significa inesorabilmente sempre).

Sapevo che altri animali, oltre ai cani, possono ammalarsi di rabbia e vivere abbastanza a lungo da trasmettertela (questo è uno degli sporchi segreti del simpatico virus, che altrimenti sarebbe condannato all’estinzione proprio dalla sua efficienza nell’uccidere i suoi ospiti). Ma pensavo che si limitassero ad altri canidi: i lupi, le volpi, i coyote, gli sciacalli, i dingo australiani… Non sapevo dei procioni, dei gatti (aaargh!) e persino degli asini, dei maiali e delle miti pecorelle. Soprattutto, non sapevo nulla degli insidiosi pipistrelli, il cui morso è così lieve che possono infliggertelo nel sonno (spesso sul naso!) senza che tu ti svegli e senza che tu, la mattina dopo, dia importanza a quella feritina che nel giro di qualche settimana ti ucciderà, e malamente.

Sì, perché – dimenticavo – tutti gli orrori associati alla rabbia, inclusa l’idrofobia e la schiuma alla bocca, la follia furiosa e gli spasmi incontrollabili, sono reali e non esagerazioni. Così, adesso che ho letto questo libro, ho anche più paura di prima.

* * *

Un altro motivo d’interesse, per me, scaturisce proprio dalla circostanza che le due specie più soggette alla rabbia siano in canidi e i pipistrelli. La rabbia, dunque, è la naturale candidata a rappresentare l’anello mancante tra vampiri e lupi mannari, miti che (come dovrebbe ormai essere noto ai miei lettori) mi affascinano entrambi e cui ho dedicato molti post (da ultimi, per esempio, questo e questo).

* * *

La lettura mi ha fatto tornare alla mente un film dei fratelli Taviani della fine degli anni Settanta, Il prato. Il Morandini ne parla così:

Giovanni (Marconi), avvocato che s’avvia a fare il magistrato, s’innamora a San Gimignano (Siena) di Eugenia (Rossellini), antropologa che s’occupa di teatro di animazione, già legata sentimentalmente a Enzo (Placido), intento al progetto di una comune agricola su terre abbandonate. Si ritrovano anni dopo. Tolti pochi momenti di grazia (l’intermezzo fantastico del pifferaio di Hammelin; la notte sull’aia dopo la caccia; il ritorno dalle terre occupate), è tormentoso e opaco, persino qua e là banale, come non era mai successo in un film dei Taviani. In questo film poco rosselliniano, la presenza di Rossellini incombe con la citazione del finale di Germania anno zero, mediata sul volto della Rossellini che, a sua volta, e non soltanto per la somiglianza fisica, evoca il ricordo di sua madre Ingrid Bergman.

ComingSoon racconta un po’ di più la trama:

Avendo appena concluso gli studi e attendendo l’assegnazione di un posto come magistrato, Giovanni, che vive a Milano, viene mandato da suo padre Sergio a San Gimignano dove potrà seguire il passaggio di proprietà di una vecchia casa colonica e nello stesso tempo godersi una meritata vacanza. Il giovanotto incontra casualmente Eugenia, una laureata in antropologia che si è dovuta accontentare di un impiego burocratico presso il municipio di Firenze ma che cerca ugualmente una realizzazione personale dedicando il tempo libero al teatro nelle strade e nelle piazze della cittadina toscana. L’amore che nasce immediatamente tra i due non cancella quello della ragazza verso Enzo, al quale è legata già da quattro anni. Enzo, un perito agrario disoccupato, giunge poco dopo a San Gimignano per tentare una “comune” agricola che fallirà per le reazioni dei padroni. Il triangolo che così si è formato si dimostra precario dal punto di vista sentimentale e anche dal punto di vista professionale: Giovanni ha ottenuto il posto presso il Palazzo di Giustizia di Milano, ma vi annaspa irrequieto; Eugenia; viene osteggiata nel suo innocente lavoro di teatrante; Enzo; coinvolto in una sparatoria, vive nel timore di un arresto. Eugenia, allora, decide di andare in Algeria come insegnante presso la colonia degli Italiani; ed Enzo la seguirà per evitare le persecuzioni politiche. Giovanni, accorso in Toscana, si sente smarrito per le due partenze e, morso dal cane idrofobo di Eugenia, rifiuta le cure del padre e della madre Giuliana, accorsa al suo letto, e si lascia morire.

In effetti, la parabola del film è fin troppo elementare e non mi era certo sfuggita quando l’avevo visto a suo tempo: la fine delle speranze – pubbliche e private – di una generazione (Saverio Marconi e Michele Placido avevano entrambi 30 anni, l’intensa Isabella Rossellini 26), “il personale è politico” che ti si ritorce contro, il famigerato riflusso, la rabbia che – impossibilitata a diventare motore del cambiamento – ti consuma e ti soffoca.

La scena della morte di Giovanni però era intensissima, ed è un peccato che su YouTube non si trovi. Godetevi il trailer con la medievale scena del pifferaio nelle strade e nei prati di San Gimignano.

E un’interessante (anche se poco pertinente) intervista dell’indimenticato Beniamino Placido ai 3 giovani protagonisti (si scopre anche che Michele Placido era un insopportabile presuntuoso già da giovane):

* * *

Nonostante questi miei interessi specifici e fin troppo reali, mi sono chiesto, apprestandomi a leggere il libro di Wasik e Murphy: ma come si fa a scrivere un libro di quasi 300 pagine su un argomento tutto considerato così limitato e specifico?

Menando il can per l’aia, naturalmente e letteralmente.

Ecco alcuni esempi, tratti dalle mie annotazioni, con i riferimenti numerici all’edizione Kindle.

With most zoonotic leaps in disease, animal contact is the spark, but urbanization is the bone-dry tinder; a newly evolved pathogen can’t spread from person to person, after all, unless people run across one another in the first place. [491]

His best-known cure — to “insert in the wound ashes of hairs from the tail of the dog that inflicted the bite” — lives on today in our expression “hair of the dog,” referring to a not-quite-so-dubious hangover remedy. [514: la cura è proposta da Plinio il Vecchio]

The French aristocrat Gaston III, Count of Foix, writes in his widely read (and imitated) hunting book Livre de chasse — written circa 1388 — about the ideal running hound, the chien baut, in which commingle all the finest canine attributes: not just beauty and obedience, but a nearly supernatural ability to track prey and to communicate with human masters. “The chien baut must not give up on its beast, not for rain nor wind nor heat nor any other weather,” writes Gaston, “and it must hunt its beast all day without the aid of man, just as if man were with it always.” (Gaston said he had encountered only three chiens bauts during his long life of hunting.) [667: questo Gastone III di Foix-Béarn è parente ma non antenato in linea diretta del Gastone di Foix-Nemours eroe della battaglia di Ravenna dell'11 aprile 1512, sepolto nel Castello sforzesco di Milano]

[…] the expression “six feet under” originated from a London health ordinance during the plague of 1665 there, with the famous prescription intended to keep men from being unearthed by man’s best friend. [707]

A tractate from the medical faculty of the University of Paris held that the air had been corrupted by noxious vapors, brought on by the movement of the planets but exacerbated by the southerly winds of late. Alfonso of Córdoba likewise blamed astronomic happenings for the plague’s onset […] [727: si sta parlando della peste, e non possono non tornare a mente le teorie del Don Ferrante dei Promessi sposi, che «su questi bei fondamenti, non prese nessuna precauzione contro la peste; gli s'attaccò; andò a letto, a morire, come un eroe di Metastasio, prendendosela con le stelle.»]

In practice, the Inquisition in Spain took a stance toward the saludadores that one might call benign neglect. One intriguing reason for this, as the Spanish historian Marí Tausiet has documented, is that saludadores also had a reputation as crackerjack witch-hunters. [897: vengono in mente i benandanti di Carlo Ginzburg]

Immediately upon the creation of vaccine came the birth of the antivaccine movement, scientists and laypeople who claimed (much as in our present day) that vaccine was “poison.” […]
Pasteur’s new vaccine soon attracted naysayers on several fronts: those who fought against all science based upon the germ theory; the anti-vaccinists (who had already honed their rhetoric against the Jennerian vaccine); and those scientific rivals who would have invented the chicken-cholera vaccine themselves if their own methodology had been more sound. Pasteur was in the midst of preparing his findings for the Académie Nationale de Médecine when his arguments with his rivals in that body became so heated that he received an invitation to duel from the aging surgeon Jules Guérin. (The sixty-year-old, hemiplegic Pasteur was delicately extricated from the challenge by friends in the Académie.) […]
Meanwhile, the researchers were forced to weather the public fury of the antivivisectionists, who denounced their work as senseless torture of innocent creatures. [1788-1808-1911: niente di nuovo sotto il sole, poveri mentecatti]

[…] Joseph Meister, who, years after being the first to be vaccinated successfully against the horror of rabies, became the concierge of the institute. When the Nazis, on occupying Paris, attempted to visit the Pasteur crypt in 1940, Meister bravely refused to unlock the gate for them. Soon after this discouraging event, he took his own life. [2134]

In Democratic-leaning times, when (so the theory ran) popular rhetoric tends to demonize bloodsucking plutocrats, the Byronic vampire will find himself ascendant; in conservative periods, by contrast, the fear is heaped on mobs of shadowy masses—whether they be criminals or welfare recipients or Muslims—and so zombies naturally rise again to become the undead bugbear of choice. This theory, too, fails to convince […] [2314]

This is a cultural history of rabies. Bill Wasik is a journalist, and Monica Murphy a veterinarian, and they've put together an amazing, and amazingly readable, account of the history, mythology, and science of rabies, the only disease we know that has a nearly 100% fatality rate.

Rabies kills, and while it's doing that, it drives is victims mad, with interludes of lucidity when they know what's happening to them. It also, though most of history, mostly reached us through the most familiar of our domestic animals, our dogs.

This is perhaps why rabies seems so tied to our myths of vampires and zombies.

The authors present to us the history not only of the cultural effects of rabies, but of the efforts to understand and control it.

For me personally, the most fascinating section is the one about Louis Pasteur. One of the founders of medical microbiology, Pasteur didn't just give us the pasteurization that makes our milk products safe. He also took the principle of vaccination that Edward Jenner had discovered when he created the smallpox vaccine in the 1790s, and expanded and developed it to create new vaccines--most notably for anthrax and for rabies. Pasteur is just an extremely interesting figure, and amazing in his dedication to, and success at, applying science to save lives.

The most appalling section, in some respects, is the return of rabies to Bali, to a great extent because authorities were so resistant to following sound advice from experts and instead committed themselves to approaches that only looked cheaper and easier in the short run. It's a valuable example of how to do things wrong.

Overall, an absorbing and revelatory book Highly recommended.

I borrowed this audiobook from my local library.

This study of rabies, its involvement with and impact on human beings, is interesting and informative when it sticks to the subject. High point for me was the section describing Louis Pasteur's ultimately successful search for a preventative vaccine and the development of an effective treatment for humans exposed to the virus.

It loses points, however, when it loses its focus and wanders off into metaphysical/folklorical accounts of lycanthropy, vampirism, and the currently-popular literary zombie. There may in fact be deep archetypal human fears tying the very real threat of rabies to the fanciful tales of human-animal chimeras or undead bogeymen, but it feels here like an unnecessary, even self-indulgent digression from the main topic.

I'm hovering between three and four stars for this book.

Rabies is a fascinating topic. The disease, once symptoms show (in particular hydrophobia), had a 100% fatality rate until less than a decade ago. Even now, it's uncertain whether a natural partial immunity exists within some people, or if the protocols recently discovered are responsible for people's survival. This uncertainty is something that has existed throughout all of rabies history. The question of what caused the disease ended in the discovery of viruses, and the creation of a vaccine created the very field of immunology. Rabies demanded innovation, as it is the disease the lives on most prominently within our very psyches.

The book digs deep into rabies' grip on us. It talks about rabies in folklore, how it relates to the vampire, the werewolf, and especially the modern zombie. The etymology of the name of the disease itself is fascinating, as is how it has influenced our feelings towards dogs, and more, how our very love of dogs has us vulnerable and how that love can't really be overcome.

This is a fascinating book, and a worthy one. I'm glad so many of my friends are intrigued by it and I hope they'll pick it up eventually. While it's no [b: The Hot Zone|16220|Hot Stuff (Hot Zone, #1)|Carly Phillips|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388663492s/16220.jpg|23640095], if you've an interest in folklore and history, and a love of dogs, I think this will be a book you'll enjoy.

I found this to be an extremely interesting and quite amusing book. It tracks the history of rabies through the millennia and discusses various treatment attempts, vaccination protocols and methods of control. There are many anecdotes told and scientific reports discussed with a real world review of the effects of the disease. It also discusses the human view of rabies through time including folklore reference to vampires and zombies. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of disease, the struggles to cope with it and have a bit of a laugh along the way. The style is both serious and tongue in cheek in places so it appeals to a wide audience. A good read.

Karen took me to the bookstore to pick out a book (or two, or three) for my birthday, and this one jumped out at me for obvious reasons. (I'd had to get the full round of rabies shots after being bitten by a bat at work a few years ago.) I immediately jumped into it, then found out it was a favorite book of Mrs. Wolf! (Jefferson's 3rd grade "Western" teacher -- rapidly becoming one of my favorite people.)

But I wanted to love this book far more than I actually did. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe it tried to do too many things in too small a book, maybe it rode the line too hard between academic and pop non-fiction, and I might have preferred it if it had fallen solidly on one side or the other, I don't know. But as the book moved forward and got closer to talking about rabies in modern times, I liked it more and more. The section on the invention of the rabies vaccine was great, as was a bit on an outbreak in NYC.

But it wasn't ever that I disliked the book, there was so much fascinating material here that I wouldn't ever say that. It was only that certain parts (especially the rabies and mythical monsters section) left me wanting more.

Good read. Needs more werewolves.

A cultural history of the world's most diabolical virus

I wanted—want—to like this book, I really did/do.

But in the first place, the style is painfully overblown. If the book were a Shakespeare performance, the lines would be declaimed melodramatically rather than just spoken. It's grating and makes it harder to bear reading what's been written.

The first chapter is supposedly about the ancient cultural history of rabies. There are exactly two genuine examples of rabies having cultural significance in some part of the ancient world. The rest of the chapter is spent on what ancient writers had to say about rabies treatment and about dogs. Some of the connections the book tries to make seem weaselly (e.g., trying to impute a connection to rabies that isn't clearly present in an ancient passage). The fact is that there just isn't enough to say about the cultural meaning of rabies in the ancient world to justify the chapter. And while it's true that dogs had much more ancient cultural significance than rabies, little of it had anything to do with rabies so most of the stuff about dogs is just there as padding. (If the ancients' takes on dogs are your thing, great; but I want to know about rabies.) Also I suspect there's a lot more about dogs in ancient writings than this book covers, so I don't trust it even to have represented that topic very well.

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy is a wonderful and insightful look into the history of this deadly virus. This book covers the myths, old remedies, different animals effected, several famous cases, the search for a vaccine, and so much more. It also describes the symptoms of the virus, the length of time for symptoms to appear and what may change this, etc. Very detailed without being boring. Great book.I got the audio version from the library.

Everyone has weird interests that don’t really make sense. One of mine is that I’ve always been fascinated by the disease rabies. How it works, its cultural history, its effects, its terrifying possibilities. This interest just isn’t something explored much in literature or nonfiction, at least not that I’ve run across. When I asked for a recommendation for rabies-themed novels, this suggestion immediately interested me and I ordered it in a rush.

No matter how interesting the subject or well done the writing, I read non-fiction slowly. A flaw for sure. This one fascinated me from the beginning; the writing style helped bring the subject material to life in a smooth, non-pretentious manner. Not dry at all, and perhaps sometimes taking liberties with humor, I hold no complaints for the writing form. I do think sometimes the authors tended to drag on a point of view too long, or overemphasize certain sections where it became slightly tedious.

The book focuses mainly on the dog and how it has been the main vehicle for the virus, at least in the perceived notions of mankind. In fact bats may be more to blame, as is credited briefly in the book, but since the nonfiction piece focuses on the culture and society’s outlook on the disease, it focuses more on canines than anything else. I was intrigued by some of the history with the dog and legends.

There’s a lot tied into Greek mythology and the history of the dog and hellhounds, as well as the original treatment processes for the misunderstood disease. They’re put inside creatively named chapters such as “The Middle Rages.” ‘In the Beginning’ was the first part after the fascinating intro. From Ayurveda, which I always found interesting, makes me inclined to believe they were more on the right track in ancient times than others. Some of the treatments were just awful. Reading these chapters brought to mind my courses in humanities last year.

Celsus’ recommendation at the end of the chapter? *Shudders* The poor people were already suffering from rabies, I’m sure this made it a much worse death!

“If he cannot swim, let him sink under and drink, then lift him out; if he can swim, push him under at intervals so that he drinks his fill of water even against his will; for so his thirst and dread of water are removed at the same time.”

“If this proto-waterboarding happens to spur muscle spasms in the subject, Celsus recommends he be “taken straight from the tank and submerged into a bath of hot oil.”

Mythology continues awhile, and while I found the information about the origin of rage and name derivations like lycos and rage intriguing, I was especially wanting more information on the cultural invention of vampires and shapeshifters.

I’ve read some information in personal studies on how rabies influenced these legends, but I don’t think the authors fully explored this as much as they could have. It seems they strangely skirted over this a little. Why, I don’t know.

When I did a week doing different posts on Edgar Allen Poe for The Paperback Stash, I came to the conclusion that he may have died from rabies, but more likely from the political corruption of that time. I appreciate the authors putting in the theory he died from this disease and the evidence supporting the theory.

King Louis was best chapter of the book, its crowning glory. I already had such respect for the man but this chapter gives even more indepth details into his life and how much he accomplished. Fascinating, a true hero in the sense of the word. Not only for his accomplishments, but for his courage in those times to try unconventional methods. Pasteur was definitely a genius ahead of his time and I’m glad his colleagues got him out of the duel an opponent that took issue with his methods proposed. If he had died in a senseless fight, the immunology methods he nursed, the rabies treatments, may have been delayed by countless years.

The methods researchers had to employ before are sobering: several men held the rabid dog down while another extracted saliva from its reaching, snarling snout. If they were bit, they were shot instantly. Yikes!

I found it hauntingly sad how it played out and was written about the first human he saved, the small child the village saved up for and sent his way to be rescued. He waited by the bedside of Joseph Meister by night, worried he would die despite his intentions, overjoyed when he was saved. When his treatments worked and through the years he met more success, Pasteur created clinics and research facilities. As an adult, Meister was one of the first to donate, and one of the most sizable contributions.

Meister is such a success, but meets a sad end that’s written strangely on pg. 148:

“Pasteur’s remains were interred not in the Pantheon but instead, according to his family’s wishes, in a specially appointed crypt beneath the Institut Pasteur. There, fifteen years later, his wife, Marie, would be laid to rest also. Mosaics depicting Pasteur’s research triumphs watched over the tombs – and so did Joseph Meister, who, years after being the first to be vaccinated against the horror of rabies, became the concierge of the institute. When the Nazis, on occupying Paris, attempted to visit the Pasteur crypt in 1940, Meister bravely refused to unlock the gate for them. Soon after this discouraging event, he took his own life.”

The chapter for King Louis showed the scientific establishment against him, even when his vaccinations took off. The coma induced attempts and trials by Dr. Rodney Willoughby when discussed modern day survivors hints that more exploration should be given in researching if his theories are correct. There was a lot of hope, but still over six years later he never got the research money and not enough funding has been supplied elsewhere to explore the theory for treatment. The chapter Island of the Mad Dogs explores how Bali, previous rabies free, became alarmingly busy with rabies through one dog spreading it swiftly. There it was a struggle to encourage the government to vaccinate rather than actively and savagely destroy the dogs.

These all show one thing – much of the fight against the disease is delayed by human ignorance. Not only in Louis Pasteur’s personal battles with the hostile community of his day, but even with the proposed treatments of the 90’s. Only continued persistence from Janice Girardi (and maybe fueled in part by outraged protests from animal groups) encouraged Bali to begin vaccinating island wide.

The conclusion makes a cool point I didn’t know – that rabies is now being seen as one possible way to break the blood-brain barrier. This has always been a frustrating barrier preventing treatments for certain ailments, and there are only limited theories of how to break it. Isolating certain components in rabies may be used to develop a way to get into the system in a way that actually reaches the brain in the way it needs the treatment, making the brain barrier cease to exist for these stubborn ailments.

Whether this will ever be developed and whether it will work remains to be seen. It could be a major medical breakthrough. It has already been shown to work in mice by delivering large amounts of an Anti-Alzheimer’s RNAi to their brains.

As the book notes, it would be a wonderful irony to take the disease that has destroyed so many minds of man in the past and use it to save the minds of many in the future. Of course my silly mind thought of zombies stories and planet of the ape sequels coming to life with this theory too!



Overall an excellent book I’m so happy I picked up. I took away a star because I felt some of the cultural explorations were a little lacking and some too explored, and even if it’s a cultural history, I’d still have enjoyed further exploration about the mechanics of the virus itself. I guess that will be learned by picking up another book on the subject.

The book takes this modern chapter’s hope to end with a beautiful note going back into its starting point with mythology on page 236: “One is reminded of Orpheus, who, in search of his dead love Eurydice, employed his beautiful music to retrieve her from the underworld. ‘Cerberus stood agape,’ records the poet, ‘and his triple jaws forgot to bark.’

This was really an engaging non-fiction! I loved the Louis Pasteur section in particular.

Rabies is a terrifying illness that lurks in the far recesses of our self-conscience. Wasik and Murphy do an admirable job of explaining its origins, history, prevention, lethal result for animals, and occasional cure for humans. If you own a cat or a dog, you need to read this book.

Overall, a good book. The parts about vampires and werewolves felt like fluff, but the parts about Louis Pastor and how he discovered the vaccine were fascinating.