An engrossing and lively history of the fearsome and
mythologized virus
In the tradition of The Emperor of All Maladies and The
Great Influenza, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian
Monica Murphy chart the history, science, and cultural
mythology of rabies. In the absence of vaccination— as was
true for thousands of years, until the late nineteenth
century—the rabies virus caused brain infections with a
nearly 100 percent fatality rate, both in animals and
humans, and the suffering it inflicted became the stuff of
legend.
The transmission of the virus—often from rabid dog to
man—reawakened a primal fear of wild animals, and the
illness’s violent symptoms spoke directly to mankind’s fear
of the beast within. The cultural response was to create
fictional embodiments of those anxieties—ravenous wolfmen,
bloodsucking vampires, and armies of mindless zombies.
From the myth of Actaeon to Saint Hubert, from the
laboratories of the heroic and pioneering Louis Pasteur to a
journalistic investigation into the madness that has gripped
modern Bali, Rabid is a fresh, fascinating, and often wildly
entertaining look at one of the world’s most misunderstood
viruses.
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