I’m not sure what made me check this out to listen to on Overdrive. I kept seeing it available? Maybe the title? It is sort of unusual to describe a virus as ‘diabolical.’ Viruses are viruses. They do what they do. There is no evil intent there.
But rabies is different. Even now, in the year 2018, with a method of treatment for the sickness that got animals killed by the thousands and terrified everyone throughout cities and rural communities alike, rabies is a scary disease. It’s good practice, as a matter of routine, that if you find bats where you live, you go get treated for rabies. If you’re bitten by anything outside, go get treated for rabies.
Rabies has terrified people for thousands of years. The sickness that makes you fear water is a long, slow, painful way to go out. Even now, once it takes hold in the brain, nobody is immune to it and (almost) nobody survives it. You painfully lose your mind, and you die.
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy takes us through Greek mythology to the middle ages to the Renaissance to contemporary times, examining the science, history, and the cultural impact of the rabies virus.
One of the most interesting things I found in this book was the link between rabies and the vampire and (even more so) werewolf legends of the middle ages in Europe. Rabies, after about 30 days, depending on the site of the bite, causes the infected, previously normal person to (more or less) lose his/her mind as (s)he becomes a snarling, hissing, foaming shell of his/her former self. The lycanthropy legend involves an infected but previously totally normal person to totally lose his/her mind and become a snarling, hissing, animal monster. When does this occur? At the full moon. How often does it occur? About every 30 days (about the incubation period of the rabies virus). Oh, and how is the werewolf infected? (S)he’s bitten by another person who has the disease. Just like…rabies.
One of my favorite parts of the book was learning about the heroic efforts Louis Pasteur took to come up with a way to inoculate against the rabies virus. I forget exactly why he was interested in this. I can’t remember if someone he loved died of rabies or it was just because he was biologist/microbiologist who was interested in it. He was fearless, collecting samples of saliva from rabid dogs himself (with the help of two assistants), testing the vaccination over and over on various animals (this hurts my heart but I recognize there was really no way around it), and finally testing it on 9 year old Joseph Meister, who had been badly mauled by a rabid dog. This was a huge risk to Pasteur because, in spite of his extensive scientific background, he was not a physician and it opened him up to legal consequences should anything go wrong.
But Meister survived. 3 months after being mauled, he was still in good health. Meister always publicly defended Pasteur (who was somewhat of a controversial figure, as people of science and forward thinking can be) and served as caretaker of the Pasteur Institute in Paris until his death in 1940. The story says he committed suicide rather than let the Nazis enter Pasteur’s crypt.
Fun Fact: I celebrated Louis Pasteur’s birthday this year by baking cookies and handing them out at work. We should celebrate our great thinkers. By the way, Pasteur also came up with the process of Pasteurization aka heating liquids to a certain temperature to destroy dangerous microorganisms living in them. Liquids like milk. Dunk your cookies.
There is a method, called the Milwaukee Protocol, to treat rabies after neurological signs of infection start showing (which usually means the patient is beyond hope) but it usually fails. It worked one time, saving the life of a Wisconsin teenager who is now the only known person to survive rabies without receiving the vaccine. Treatment involves putting the patient in a coma, pumping the patient with antiviral drugs, and letting the body fight off the infection before it completely destroys the brain. The theory behind this treatment being something along the lines of “if the human body can fight off other viruses, it can fight off this one given enough time and medical help.” If a patient is showing neurological symptoms, they might as well try this treatment. They’re definitely going to die without it and only probably going die with it, which is still better than “definitely.” But really, if you think you’ve been exposed, just go get the vaccine.
Finally, as with many of my books, I did this one on audiobook. It was read by Johnny Heller, who was the same person who read another one of my 2017 favorites, The Lampshade. Heller did an excellent job narrating this book as well.
I loved Rabid. It was, in many ways, a scary book. It’s easy to understand why people hundred and thousands of years ago who didn’t understand viruses thought the rabies virus was diabolical. It is slow, and painful, and always fatal, sending normal people into unrecognizable, raving madness before killing them. I know a lot of people on Goodreads didn’t find it a very interesting book, and for some reason they really hated that the virus was anthropomorphized in the title. But I think they missed the point. And I loved the book. I love myths and legends, science and history. And people get all wrapped up in how scary rabies is, and it is scary. But the book, possibly without meaning to, provides a lot of reasons for hope – not just regarding rabies, but regarding lots of things.
As scary and dangerous as the rabies virus is, science and human ingenuity conquered it. Rabies has been almost entirely eliminated as a human cause of death globally. Even developing countries have seen huge declines in deaths by rabies infections. Just think of all the other things we can accomplish.
words in scarlet ink 