Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus (original 2012; edition 2012)

It is unfortunate that Rabid's best chapters fall at the end of the book. I loved reading about Louis Pasteur's experiments and the rabies outbreak in Bali. The author, Bill Wasik, finally has real personalities to work with, real scientific challenges to chronicle, real stories to tell. After slogging through the first two-thirds of Rabid I perked up and found myself thinking, "Well, most of this book was a chore to read but this...this!...would make a great magazine article."

And if that sounds like damning by faint praise, well...it's meant to. Rabid is not one of those books whose defined, narrow subject cuts an exciting trail through the vastness of history. It tries to be. It traces the emergence of rabies from ancient Egypt to the present, it grapples with the cultural history of animal domestication, the interplay between cultural prejudice and scientific discovery, the forward march of science and the sheer power of fear.

It would be awesome, except that it isn't. Huge chunks of the book are very academic, dense, factual prose. Which is interesting if the author has some revolutionary argument to make. Some brilliant idea to frame and polish. Wasik is just cataloguing what seems to be every single historical mention of rabies ever. I felt like I was reading an earnest undergraduate paper and I pitied all of my former professors.

The closer that Wasik gets to the present the more interesting his material. He's got chops enough to make the story of rabies in the modern world pretty fascinating - everything from Louis Pasteur to the present is great. All of a sudden he's writing narrative non-fiction of the kind I like most, where there's a story and characters, challenges to overcome, anecdotes to relate.

There's some good stuff in here, but I'd only recommend the book to people who are either (a) deeply, deeply interested in rabies or (b) really guiltless about skimming the boring bits.

( )

Rabies is a disease and a meaning so old and so fearsome, it is out of an ancestral nightmare. The body convulses. The mouth froths with rage. The virus is one of a few which attacks the nerves, leading the victim to periods of mania and lethargy, and death is almost certain if prophylaxis is not given before the symptoms worsen to this extent.

This is ostensibly a cultural history, but it is also good public health history and good journalism. The book starts with folklore and science from werewolves to Pasteur, and speculates that the Rage of Hector in the Iliad (Rage �E€E Goddess, sing the rage of Achilles) may be an allusion to rabies.

A more fearsome episode takes place in Bali, which had to undertake a radical vaccination and quarantine program to save its hunting dog population.

Although rabies exists far from those of us in the West, it is still a reality for those in Africa and South Asia. For us, this is a good little scare. ( )

One of the better popular science books I've read lately. They take the "cultural history" part seriously, which I enjoy - but still fail to treat pre-modern medicine with any kind of consistency, which is a pet peeve of mine. The authors are aware that the scientific method didn't exist yet, but still judge pre-modern medicine on the basis of it failing to conform to the scientific method. I just. Why. ( )

It's amazing how soon, in a generation or two, we forget about the diseases that used to keep us up at night. Polio, 1918 influenza...rabies. I enjoyed the perspective and the writing very much. ( )

This book is a nice complement to The Ghost Map. Rabies is almost the opposite of cholera. It has been known of since at least 2000 B.C.E., no one has ever doubted the fact that it is transmitted between animals and from animal to human, it affects the central nervous system, and it is 100% fatal. Before the invention of the rabies vaccine by Pasteur in 1885, there was literally nothing that could be done to prevent rabies. After the rabies vaccine, rabies is very close to being extinct in humans and pets. It remains, however, a terrifying disease, simply due to its unique symptoms and their portrayal in media throughout history.

There are lots of fun facts here. I knew a lot less about rabies than I thought I did. The book goes off on many tangents (especially about the history of dogs as pets) but for the most part they are enjoyable. However, the book completely spoils the entire plots of the following books/movies: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Shirley, The Professor, I am Legend (the book and the Will Smith movie version), Their Eyes Were Watching God, Old Yeller, Cujo, and the movie 28 Days Later. The last 5 of these (and maybe Jane Eyre) were very important to the history of rabies. The Brontes, though? Not so much. They were just used as examples of pet dogs in literature, and there was absolutely no reason to ruin the plot.

Recommended, but beware of the spoilers. ( )