Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus

1 Consider the kamikaze bobcat in Cottonwood: John Faherty, “No Tall Tale: Rabid Bobcat Invades Cottonwood Bar,” Arizona Republic, March 27, 2009.

1 Or the frenzied otter in Vero Beach: Associated Press, May 27, 2007.

1 Or the enraged beaver in the Loch Raven Reservoir: Bob Allen, North County News, Aug. 22, 2007.

2 one young couple in the Adirondack hamlet: Bob Condon, “Man Bitten in Attack by Rabid Fox,” Glens Falls Post-Star, April 9, 2008.

2 “What disturbs me,” remarked one Connecticut man: NBC Connecticut, Aug. 18, 2010.

2 For one victim in Putnam County: This American Life, Oct. 27, 2006.

2 the red fox in South Carolina: Jill Coley, “Deadly, Grisly Rabies Still Threat in Lowcountry,” Charleston Post and Courier, Nov. 20, 2008.

3 a dog was attacked by a mad peccary: KPHO.com, Feb. 18, 2011.

3 a skunk that beset the pet Pekingese: ThePilot.com, Nov. 24, 2010.

3 a donkey fell prey to the madness: Brennan Leathers, “Donkey Bite Prompts Rabies Warning,” Post-Searchlight, Jan. 12, 2011.

3 In Imperial, Nebraska, the afflicted animal: Russ Pankonin, “Rabid Sheep Causes Stir at the Fair,” Imperial Republican, Sept. 3, 2010.

4 “the lethal gift of livestock”: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 195.

4 “breathed out nastier germs”: Ibid., 195.

5 Susan Sontag noted that even as late as: Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 2001), 126–27. Illness as Metaphor was originally published in 1978; AIDS and Its Metaphors, from which this particular insight was drawn, was originally published in 1988.

6 King of the Hill: “To Kill a Ladybird,” December 12, 1999.

6 Beavis and Butt-Head: “Rabies Scare,” March 18, 1994.

6 Scrubs: “My Lunch,” April 25, 2006.

6 The Office: “Fun Run,” September 27, 2007.

6 fifty-five thousand, in the estimate: World Health Organization, September 2011.

7 a portrait of Lennox as a boy: George Romney, Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, Duke of Lennox, and of Aubigny (ca. 1776–77).

7 so named in honor of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher: Rosemary Baird, Goodwood: Art and Architecture, Sport and Family (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007), 170.

8 it began one day with shoulder pains: Alan C. Jackson, “The Fatal Neurologic Illness of the Fourth Duke of Richmond in Canada: Rabies,” Annals of the RCPSC 27, no. 1 (Feb. 1994).

8 On YouTube one can find video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtiytblJzQc.

8 “I don’t know how it is”: Frederic Tolfrey, The Sportsman in Canada, Vol. 2 (London: T. C. Newby, 1845), 228.

9 The next day, the duke ate and drank: Jackson, “Fatal Neurologic Illness.”

9 so repelled was he by the water in the basin: Baird, Goodwood, 170.

9 “the patient is seized with sudden terror”: Armand Trousseau, Lectures on Clinical Medicine (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1873), 2:85.

9 sometimes occurring at a rate of once per hour: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 59, no. 38 (2010): 1236–38.

9 an unfortunate porter who suffered such emissions: Armand Trousseau, Lectures on Clinical Medicine (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1867), 1:686.

10 the duke dictated a lengthy letter: Baird, Goodwood, 171.

10 once saw Pasteur perform this trick: Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele (New York: Dutton, 1930), 51.

10 “At the beginning of each session” : Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 430.

15 “Mix us stronger drink”: The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 9.203.

15 “I have learned to be valiant”: Ibid., 6.444.

16 “a hunting hound in the speed of his feet”: Ibid., 8.338–39.

16 his pitch to Achilles: Ibid., 9.238–39.

16 no fewer than nine terms: Thomas Walsh, Fighting Words and Feuding Words: Anger and the Homeric Poems (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005), 1–3.

16 It has not been invoked anywhere in the poem: The definitive accounting of lyssa in Homer is Bruce Lincoln’s essay “Homeric Lyssa: ‘Wolfish Rage,’” in Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 131–37.

16 goading Heracles to slay his family: Euripides, Heracles.

16 Pentheus’s own mother and aunt: Euripides, The Bacchae.

16 a feminine form wearing a dog’s head: One such image is here: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/N17.1.html.

17 “as a snake waits for a man by his hole”: Iliad of Homer, trans. Lattimore, 22.93.

17 “powerful lyssa unrelentingly possesses”: Iliad 21:242–43; translated in Lincoln, “Homeric Lyssa: ‘Wolfish Rage.’”

17 one of humanity’s first recorded jokes: The joke (as well as its interpretation) comes to us from Andrew R. George, “Ninurta-pāqidāt’s Dog Bite, and Notes on Other Comic Tales,” Iraq 55 (1993): 63–75.

19 “If a dog becomes rabid”: Wu Yuhong, “Rabies and Rabid Dogs in Sumerian and Akkadian Literature,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 1 (Jan.–March 2001): 33.

19 “Like a rabid dog, he does not know”: Ibid.

19 the omens of entrails readers: Ibid., 35.

19 lunar eclipses in particular months: Ibid., 36.

19 the Marduk Prophecy: Ibid., 37–38.

19 some of the incantations: Ibid., 38–42.

21 The Samhita devotes nearly a thousand words: Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, trans., An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita (Calcutta: published by the author, 1907), 733–36.

21 “The bodily Vāyu, in conjunction”: Ibid., 733–34.

23 his notes on hydrophobia: Celsus, De medicina, book 5, chap. 27.

23 an anonymous methodist text: Ivan Garofalo, ed., De Morbis Acutis et Chroniis (New York: E. J. Brill, 1997), 85–89.

23 the notes on hydrophobia made by Soranus: On Acute Diseases and On Chronic Diseases, trans. I. E. Drabkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 361–89.

24 “The victims of hydrophobia die quickly”: Ibid., 367.

24 Based on findings of teeth and bones: Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), 111.

25 dating back as far as 3500 B.C.: Katharine Rogers, First Friend: A History of Dogs and Humans (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 29.

25 when archaeologists excavated her temple at Isin: Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 70.

25 often scarred with knife marks: Nicholas Wade, “In Taming Dogs, Humans May Have Sought a Meal,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2009.

26 “come to the world of men in the shape”: Willem Bollée, Gone to the Dogs in Ancient India (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 54.

26 rife with images of dogs as battlefield scavengers: Ibid., 33–34.

26 An excavated tomb at Abydos: Michael Rice, Swifter Than the Arrow: The Golden Hunting Hounds of Ancient Egypt (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 36–37, 46, 55.

27 References to dogs as scavengers in Egypt: D. M. Dixon, “A Note on Some Scavengers of Ancient Egypt,” World Archaeology 21, no. 2 (Oct. 1989): 193–97.

27 “They were afraid that some lyssa”: Xenophon, Anabasis, book 5, chap. 7.

28 “My dogs in front of my doorway”: The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 22.66–76.

29 Iris slinging it at Athena: R. H. A. Merlen, De Canibus: Dog and Hound in Antiquity (London: J. A. Allen, 1971), 27.

29 renders both transitions with awful acuity: Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), book 3, 252–318.

30 As described by Hesiod, Cerberus was quite friendly: Hesiod, Theogony, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 770–74.

30 “slaver from Cerberus”: Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 4, 683.

30 along with a creation myth: Ibid., book 7, 578–95.

30 symptoms of aconite poisoning: John Blaisdell, “A Frightful, but Not Necessarily Fatal, Madness: Rabies in Eighteenth-Century England and English North America” (Ph.D. diss., Iowa State University, 1995), 18.

31 In 2001, two researchers at France’s Institut Pasteur: Hassan Badrane and Noël Tordo, “Host Switching in Lyssavirus History from the Chiroptera to the Carnivora Orders,” Journal of Virology 75, no. 17 (2001): 8096–104.

32 a team led by the Stanford epidemiologist: Nathan Wolfe, “The Origin of Malaria: Discovered,” Huffington Post, Aug. 3, 2009.

32 particularly intriguing details about smallpox: Yu Li et al., “On the Origin of Smallpox: Correlating Variola Phylogenics with Historical Smallpox Records,” PNAS 104, no. 40 (2007): 15787–92.

32 archaeological evidence shows the clear presence: Donald Hopkins, The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 14–15.

34 the disease does appear in Ge Hong’s: Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), VI:6:91–92.

34 Things totter off the rails with Pliny: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book 29, chap. 32.

40 as the historian John Cummins notes: John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 74.

40 stag pursued by hounds would sometimes figure: Brigitte Resl, ed., A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age (New York: Berg, 2007), 76.

40 one Christian allegorist likened the ten points: Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 68.

40 Bestiaries, in their treatment of the stag: Resl, Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, 61.

40 One fourteenth-century German work: Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 72.

41 ordered not to eat the flesh of wild beasts: Exodus 22:31.

42 “his hidden parts were made rotten and stinking”: Matthew Zimmern, “Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in the Diocese of Liège, c. 700–980” (Ph.D. diss., University of St. Andrews, 2007), 48.

43 Hubert’s own set of otherworldly interventions: Ibid., 51.

43 petitioned the current bishop, Waltcaud: Satoshi Tada, “The Creation of a Religious Centre: Christianisation in the Diocese of Liège in the Carolingian Period,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54, no. 2 (April 2003): 218–19.

46 “The chien baut must not give up”: Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 19.

46 The Castilian king Alfonso XI: Ibid., 25.

46 One medieval archbishop of Canterbury: George Jesse, Researches into the History of the British Dog (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1866), 2:36.

47 Thomas à Becket: Ibid., 2:38.

47 “A grehounde sholde be heeded lyke”: Ibid., 2:136–37.

47 William of Wykeham upbraided one particular abbey: Eileen Power, Medieval People (London: Methuen, 1950), 121.

48 list of English public records: Jesse, History of the British Dog, 2:7.

48 In other accounts, peasants who took game: Matt Cartmill, A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 61.

48 standard practice for all commoners’ dogs: Jesse, Researches into the History of the British Dog, 1:375.

48 “many dead throughout the city”: Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (New York: Penguin, 1982), 58.

48 one chronicle reports grave diggers: Joseph Patrick Byrne, The Black Death (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004), 108.

49 “as if they were mounds of hay”: Joseph Patrick Byrne, Daily Life During the Black Death (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006), 101.

49 In painted plague scenes: Christine Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconology and Iconography (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2000), 64.

49 the expression “six feet under”: Ibid., 16.

50 The preeminent Arab physician: Anna Campbell, The Black Death and Men of Learning (New York: AMS Press, 1966), 35.

50 a tract theorizing that the new: Ibid., 47–51.

50 Gentile of Foligno thought: Ibid., 53–55.

50 A tractate from the medical faculty: Ibid., 55–58.

50 Alfonso of Córdoba likewise blamed: Ibid., 52–53.

51 a physician from the French town: Ibid., 60–62.

51 “festering boils…break out on people”: Exodus 9:8–9.

52 a massive swine flu epidemic: Francisco Guerra, “The Earliest American Epidemic: The Influenza of 1493,” Social Science History 12, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 313–19.

52 put the death toll from disease in Hispaniola: Mary Ellen Snodgrass, World Epidemics (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003), 51.

52 “the cause of the ailments so common among us”: Ibid., 50.

52 an English-language translation and expansion: Edward, second Duke of York, The Master of Game (New York: Duffield, 1909), 85–104.

54 historians have found annual outlays: Cummins, Hound and the Hawk, 30.

55 By 1288, a French wag: From XMLittré, an online version (hosted at http://francois.gannaz.free.fr/Littre/) of Émile Littré’s 1863 historical dictionary of the French language. Many thanks to Jon Lackman for the interpretation.

55 by 1678: Ibid.

56 “is that illness is not a metaphor”: Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Picador, 2001), 3.

56 Through assiduous translation to Arabic: Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Cairo: American University Press in Cairo, 2007), 16, 83, 97–98.

57 By the tenth century, Baghdad: Ibid., 83.

57 the thirteenth century saw the establishment: Ibid., 97–98.

57 a process akin to scholarly peer review: Ray Spier, “The History of the Peer-Review Process,” Trends in Biotechnology 20, no. 8 (Aug. 2002): 357.

57 “There was with us in hospital”: Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 116.

57 His preferred treatment for bites: Jean Théodoridès, Histoire de la rage: Cave canem (Paris: Masson, 1986), 48. Thanks to Alex Bedrosyan of the Columbia University Tutoring and Translation Agency for the translation.

57 he anchors his observation with a personal narrative: Ibid., 50.

58 the great doctor expressed the belief that heat and cold: Ibid., 48–49.

58 A fairly lengthy treatment of rabies: The Medical Writings of Moses Maimonides (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963), 1:67–72.

59 Artifact collectors have preserved: Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 152.

59 They were blood relatives of Saint Catherine: Fabián Alejandro Campagne, “Charismatic Healers on Iberian Soil: An Autopsy of a Mythical Complex of Early Modern Spain,” Folklore 118 (April 2007): 44–46.

59 In 1619, a shoemaker named Gabriel Monteche: María Tausiet, “Healing Virtue: Saludadores Versus Witches in Early Modern Spain,” Medical History Supplement 29 (2009): 47–48.

61 On two occasions during the 1570s: William Christian Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 6, 11, 29, 40.

61 saludadores also had a reputation: Tausiet, “Healing Virtue,” 50–51.

65 Over four densely cited pages: Juan Gómez-Alonso, “Rabies: A Possible Explanation for the Vampire Legend,” Neurology 51, no. 3 (1998): 856–59.

65 Even Playboy weighed in: “Humping Like Rabids,” Playboy, March 1, 1999.

66 does raise many intriguing parallels: Gómez-Alonso, “Rabies.”

67 “nothing was spoken of but vampires”: Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824), 6:306.

67 the self-described age of reason: Wayne Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu, Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006), 19.

69 “Frightened, [Lycaon] runs off”: Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), book 1, 323–32.

69 Old Norse gives us the legend: Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (New York: Causeway Books, 1973), 39–40.

70 the Laighne Faelaidh, a race of men: George Henderson, Survivals in Belief Among the Celts (Glasgow: J. Maclehose & Sons, 1911), 170.

70 A number of ancient Indo-European tribal names: Ian Woodward, The Werewolf Delusion (London: Paddington Press, 1979), 30.

70 When Herodotus writes of the Neurians: Baring-Gould, Book of Were-Wolves, 9.

70 an account of a half-human tribe in India: David Gordon-White, Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 49.

70 Strabo, a geographer from the first century: Patricia Dale-Green, Lore of the Dog (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 170.

70 Similarly, the Ch’i-tan: Gordon-White, Myths of the Dog-Man, 133.

70 cynocephali, or “dog-headed men”: Ibid., 63.

71 a taxonomy for the thousands: Barbara Allen Woods, The Devil in Dog Form: A Partial Type-Index of Devil Legends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959).

71 “If there is any merit”: Ibid., 33.

72 Nicholas Remy turned this same reasoning: Nicholas Remy, Demonolatry (London: J. Rodker, 1930), 70.

72 moments of particular wickedness: Woods, Devil in Dog Form.

72 “with strange pleading eyes”: Ibid., 77.

73 “That which is once forsworn”: Ibid., 113.

73 Elizabeth Clarke, who during the seventeenth: Dale-Green, Lore of the Dog, 79.

73 Alison’s account of her dog’s attack: E. Lynn Linton, Witch Stories (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861), 270.

74 1521. Two admitted werewolves: Bartlett and Idriceanu, Legends of Blood, 94.

74 1530. Near Poitiers, three enormous wolves: Montague Summers, The Werewolf (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1933), 225.

74 1541. A farmer in Pavia: Baring-Gould, Book of Were-Wolves, 64–65.

74 1558. Near Apchon: Summers, Werewolf, 228.

75 1573. The town of Dole: Baring-Gould, Book of Were-Wolves, 74–78.

75 1598. An entire family: Ibid., 78–81.

75 That same year, near Angers: Ibid., 81–84.

75–76 1603. Jean Grenier…snatched from a cradle: Ibid., 85–99.

77 “confessed to me also”: Pierre de Lancre, On the Inconstancy of Witches, trans. Gerhild Scholz Williams (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), 331.

77 an account of rabies in 1702: Richard Mead, A Mechanical Account of Poisons (London: J. Brindley, 1745), 150–51.

78 Mead even goes so far: Ibid., 154–55.

78 Like many physicians of his day: Anna Marie Roos, “Luminaries in Medicine: Richard Mead, James Gibbs, and Solar and Lunar Effects on the Human Body in Early Modern England,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 3 (Fall 2000).

78 “varied both in colour and magnitude”: Ibid., 445.

78 “depended upon the lunar force”: Richard Mead, A Treatise Concerning the Influence of the Sun and Moon upon Human Bodies (London: J. Brindley, 1748), 64.

78 the “legend of the torn garment”: Woods, Devil in Dog Form, 95.

79 a vampire account from Baghdad: Baring-Gould, Book of Were-Wolves, 253.

79 the remedy for dog bite that Richard Mead: Mead, Mechanical Account of Poisons, 164–65.

80 “recovered without the help”: Ibid., 178.

80 “sucking the blood of people and cattle”: Bartlett and Idriceanu, Legends of Blood, 12.

80 the great wave arrived: Ibid., 13.

81 “After it had been reported”: From Paul Barber’s translation of “Visum et repertum,” included in Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010), 16.

82 the release of pent-up gases: Ibid., 161.

82 a tale from Siret, in northern Romania: Matthew Beresford, From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth (London: Reaktion, 2008), 64.

82 another folklorist lists the animal forms: Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death, 87.

83–84 The proprietor of a hotel across the lake: Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler, The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein (New York: Little, Brown, 2006).

85 Goaded by a lover, Polidori: David Lorne Macdonald, Poor Polidori: A Critical Biography of the Author of The Vampyre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 95–97.

86 “Usually they bite at night”: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, trans. Sterling Stoudemire, Natural History of the West Indies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 62.

86 Translations of Oviedo’s abridged history: Kathleen Myers, Fernández de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America: A New History for a New World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 3–4.

87 a 1796 account of his years in Suriname: J. G. Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam…(London: J. Johnson, 1806), 146–47.

88 Goya was using spectral, bat-like figures: James Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1981), 20–29.

88 “whole circumstance has lately been doubted”: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, entry for April 9.

91 “One cannot conceive,” Campbell wrote: Millennial Harbinger 5, no. 1 (1848): 267–69.

92 Rumor had it that to end: Notes and Queries 6, no. 148 (1852): 207.

92 as one admirer noted years after her death: Charles Waterton, Essays on Natural History: Third Series (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857), 177.

92 “no nose was so much talked of”: Quoted in “Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe,” Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, July 1889.

93 An 1830 paper in the Lancet: Lancet, Feb. 6, 1830, 619.

93 “Not only a most disgusting”: Alfred Swaine Taylor, On Poisons in Relation to Medical Jurisprudence and Medicine (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1848), 457.

93 another called it “degrading”: Medical Adviser, and Guide to Health and Long Life, Oct. 2, 1824, 242.

93 believed to be some 100,000 pet dogs: Kathleen Kete, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 53–54.

94 “the degraded state and savage disposition”: Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (London: John Murray, 1868), 2:46. Harriet Ritvo’s splendid book The Animal Estate draws out this theme in far more detail.

94 ten times more likely to die: Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 169–70.

95 a list of twenty-one supposed causes: Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations (Philadelphia: J. Conrad, 1805), 2:303–5.

95 On those instances when they did diverge: Lester King, The Medical World of the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 59–60.

95 saw the body mechanistically: Ibid., 65–83.

96 From November to May, Rush: David Hawke Freeman, Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 48.

96 “Having dined on beef, peas, and bread”: Ibid., 57–58.

96 “mischievous effects on the nervous system”: Ibid., 110.

96 how to make saltpeter: Ibid., 127, 136.

96 Rush inoculated Patrick Henry: Ibid., 130.

97 on hand to perform battlefield medicine: Ibid., 178.

97 a tradition, beginning at least with Boerhaave: John Blaisdell, “A Frightful, but Not Necessarily Fatal, Madness: Rabies in Eighteenth-Century England and English North America” (Ph.D. diss., Iowa State University, 1995), 36, 39.

97 “was uncommonly sizy in a boy”: Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations, 311.

97 his 1792 doctoral thesis on the disease: James Mease, An Inaugural Dissertation on the Disease Produced by the Bite of a Mad Dog, or Other Rabid Animal (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1792).

98 a second pamphlet on rabies: James Mease, Observations on the Arguments of Professor Rush, in Favour of the Inflammatory Nature of the Disease Produced by the Bite of a Mad Dog (Whitehall, Eng.: William Young, 1801).

98 “One of the first things I can remember”: Unpublished autobiographical notes, 2, James Mease Archive, UCLA Biomedical Library.

99 a comical ditty, called “The Two Dog Shows”: Neil Pemberton and Michael Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 70.

99–100 “Le chien est une machine à aimer”: Gordon Stables, Notre ami le chien (Paris: J. Rothschild, 1897), 1.

100 “Great Dog Massacres”: Kathleen Kete, “La Rage and the Bourgeoisie: The Cultural Context of Rabies in the French Nineteenth Century,” Representations, no. 22 (Spring 1988), 90 and n12.

100 In England, the preferred method of dispatch: Ritvo, Animal Estate, 191–92.

100 “turned ordinary people into murderers”: Pemberton and Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 74.

100 “Constantinople and Africa are rabies-free”: Kete, “La Rage and the Bourgeoisie,” 97.

100 reports were coming in from India: Ritvo, Animal Estate, 174.

100 “exhausted” their “nervous system”: Ibid., 180.

100 “Hydrophobia makes its appearance”: Pemberton and Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 31.

100 Different theories fingered different breeds: Ritvo, Animal Estate, 181.

100 One letter writer to the London Times: Pemberton and Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 31.

101 In the 1850s, France created: Kete, “La Rage and the Bourgeoisie,” 100.

101 Britain had a similar tax: Ritvo, Animal Estate, 179.

101 “its instinct impels it, at times”: George Fleming, Rabies and Hydrophobia (London: Chapman and Hall, 1872), 194.

101 “invariably express an exaggerated attachment”: Kete, “La Rage and the Bourgeoisie,” 101.

103 the strange dog, clearly in distress: Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (London: Smith, Elder, 1857), 308–10.

103 “I doubt whether…no harm will ensue”: Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850), 451.

104 “would have been, had she been placed in health”: Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë, 302.

104n “The surprise is not that the Brontës died so young”: Beth Torger-son, Reading the Brontë Body (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2–3.

105 what he calls “biological horror”: Jason Colavito, Knowing Fear (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008), 78.

105 “a bizarre liminal creature poised somewhere”: Ibid., 65.

105 an 1830 letter to the London Times: Times (London), June 4, 1830.

106 “with ape-like fury”: Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886), 37.

106 “Leaving to the patient all the faculties”: Kete, Beast in the Boudoir, 101.

107 “vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects”: Letter reprinted in The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: The University Society, 1902), 335.

107 “a violent delirium, resisting the efforts”: Ibid., 336.

108 R. Michael Benitez developed a theory: R. Michael Benitez, “Rabies,” Maryland Medical Journal 45 (1996): 765–69.

109 a thoroughly dubious 1830 address: H. W. Dewhurst, Observations on the Probable Causes of Rabies, or Madness, in the Dog (London: published for the author, 1831), 9–14.

109 one generally respected text from 1857: Kete, Beast in the Boudoir, 103.

109 an 1845 proposal, penned by a certain Monsignor: “Project for the Prevention of Hydrophobia in Man,” translated in Monthly Journal of Medical Science, Nov. 1845, 878–79.

110 In 1830, when the British Parliament: Pemberton and Worboys, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 24–25.

110 a tally of rabies experts surveyed by M. J. Bourrel: Kete, Beast in the Boudoir, 105.

111 “that rabid man related by Haller”: Rossi, trans. Dell’Orto, “Mylabris Fulgurita—Its Use in Hydrophobia,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 11 (Jan. 1884): 539.

111 Bachelet and Froussart emphasize the weakness: Kete, Beast in the Boudoir, 102.

111–12 l’enfant du diable, or “the child of the devil”: William Baillie-Grohman, Camps in the Rockies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1882), 401.

112 “there is no wild beast in the West”: Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1884), 33–34.

112 In the 1870s, when the army colonel: Richard Irving Dodge, The Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1877), 95.

112 Roosevelt, in one of his memoirs, recalled: Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, 33–34.

112 Perhaps the most spectacular attack: Fred Gowans, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of the Fur Trade Rendezvous, 1825–1840 (Salt Lake City: G. M. Smith/Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), 80–95.

113 Another rabies-addled wolf rampaged: Dodge, Plains of the Great West and Their Inhabitants, 97–98.

114 “was saved on account of wolf biting through pants”: Benteen to Theodore Goldin, Feb. 22, 1896, in “The Benteen-Goldin Letters,” mimeographed (ca. 1952), Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

114 quantities of the deadly poison strychnine: Baillie-Grohman, Camps in the Rockies, 406.

114 The anthropologist George Bird Grinnell: George Bird Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales (New York: Scribner, 1892), 283.

114 Colonel Dodge put forward the truly odd claim: Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians (Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington, 1882), 320–21.

114–15 one particularly tantalizing Native American cure: American Farmer, Feb. 1, 1828, 367.

115 “From the colonists’ perspective, Indians”: Jon Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 42–43.

115 “wild beasts and beast-like men”: Richard Hildreth, The History of the United States of America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849), 1:281.

115 “act like wolves and are to be dealt withal as wolves”: Coleman, Vicious, 43.

115 One tribe, the Skidi Pawnee: Ibid., 45–46.

116 “There was not the slightest danger from them”: Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail (Boston: Little, Brown, 1872), 324.

116 forgoing the purchase of a carriage: Thomas Brock, Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology (Washington, D.C.: American Society for Microbiology, 1999), 22–23.

116 began his studies of anthrax in 1873: Ibid., 31–35.

121 Roux’s medical training had been temporarily disrupted: Hubert Arthur Lechevalier and Morris Solotorovsky, Three Centuries of Microbiology (New York: Dover, 1975), 143.

121 “This Roux is really a pain”: Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 334.

122 “Live in the serene peace”: René Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, trans. Mrs. R. L. Devonshire (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1916), 451.

122 “When I see a child”: Ibid., 447.

122 “I am now wholly wrapped up”: Ibid., 172.

123 leading to a case fatality rate: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_variolation.html.

123 within a year the Prince of Wales’s daughters: Abbas M. Behbehani, “The Smallpox Story: Life and Death of an Old Disease,” Microbiological Reviews 47, no. 4 (1983): 455–509.

123 Only after the unexpected death of Louis XV: Frank Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988), 255.

124 more than 100,000 were vaccinated: Sheryl Persson, Smallpox, Syphilis, and Salvation: Medical Breakthroughs That Changed the World (Wollombi, NSW, Australia: Exisle, 2009), 31.

124 scientists and laypeople who claimed: Arthur Allen, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 56–57, 64–69.

125 rampant in France during the 1870s: Bernard J. Freedman, “A Tale of Two Holidays: How to Make Great Discoveries,” British Medical Journal, July 15, 1989, 162.

125n the French historian Antonio Cadeddu: Gerald L. Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 40.

127n “The Koch group, which relied on”: Thomas D. Brock, Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology (Madison, Wisc.: Science Tech, 1988), 171–72.

128 “[t]he twenty-five unvaccinated sheep will perish”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 315–20.

128 “As M. Pasteur foretold”: Nigel Kelly, Bob Rees, and Paul Shute, Medicine Through Time (Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 2002), 87, quoting Times (London), June 3, 1881.

129 “This malady is one of those”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 417, quoting Emile Roux, “L’oeuvre medicale de Pasteur,” Agenda du Chimiste (1896).

131 “absolutely ignorant of any connection”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 391.

131 “This is indeed a new disease”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 419, quoting Pasteur in Vallery-Radot, Maladies virulentes, virus-vaccins, et prophylaxie de la rage, in Oeuvres de Pasteur (Paris: Masson et Cie, 1939), 555.

132 Pasteur referred to the unseen: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 414–15.

133 “‘We absolutely have to inoculate the rabbits”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 429, quoting R. Rosset, Pasteur et la rage (Lyon: Fondation Mérieux, 1985).

134 “The seat of the rabic virus”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 172.

134 “It is torture for the experimenter”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 421.

134 “[Roux], [Charles] Chamberland, and [Louis] Thuillier”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 430, quoting Rosset, Pasteur et la rage.

136 “Until now I have not dared”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 404.

137 “I have not yet dared to treat”: Ibid., 410.

138 “On 6 July at eight o’clock”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 439.

139 “My dear children”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 416.

139 “Cured from his wounds”: Ibid., 417.

140 “Very good news last night”: Ibid.

140 “Hydrophobia, that dread disease”: Ibid., 422.

141 “he had a kind word for every one”: Ibid., 447.

141 “I have such confidence in the preventive forces”: Pasteur Institute Web site, http://www.pasteurfoundation.org/historic.shtml.

142 “Is this all we have come”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 426.

142 the story was raptly followed: Bert Hansen, “Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America,” History Now, no. 10 (Dec. 2006), http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/12_2006/historian6.php.

142 the four of them were trotted out: Bert Hansen, “America’s First Medical Breakthrough: How Popular Excitement About a French Rabies Cure in 1885 Raised New Expectations for Medical Progress,” American Historical Review 103, no. 2 (1998): 373–418.

142 Many newspapers also went out: Hansen, “Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America.”

143 “It reversed the assumption”: Ibid.

143 Some, in the decade or so: Hansen, “America’s First Medical Breakthrough.”

143 “From the heights of our settled situations”: Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 130, quoting Jeanne, “La bactériologie et la profession médicale,” Concours Médicale 4, no. 5 (1895): 205.

144 By the year 1900: Pasteur Institute Web site, http://www.pasteurfoundation.org/historic.shtml.

144 the institute’s purposes were: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 467.

145–46 “Dr. von Frisch…has not succeeded”: Ibid., 460.

146 “How difficult it is to obtain”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 433.

146 “Pasteur continues to be fairly well”: Debré, Louis Pasteur, 494.

146 “Our only consolation, as we feel”: Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, 439.

152 it was proved beyond doubt that this pathogen: Dave Mosher, “Black Death’s Daddy Was the Bubonic Plague,” Wired Science, Oct. 8, 2010.

152 But throughout 1918, during the height of the epidemic: Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 296–97.

152 reported its toll in stark terms: J. S. Koen, “A Practical Method for Field Diagnosis of Swine Diseases,” American Journal of Veterinary Medicine 14 (1919): 469–70.

153 “I believe I have as much to support this diagnosis”: Ibid., 470.

153 “a peroration…worthy of Luther”: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 297–98.

154 some pathbreaking research on distemper: George Dunkin and Patrick Laidlaw, “Dog Distemper in the Ferret,” Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics 39 (1926): 201–12.

154 In 1933 they succeeded, isolating a virus: Gina Kolata, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 75.

154 That same year Shope: Ibid., 76.

154 “the virus of swine influenza is really the virus”: Patrick Laidlaw, “Epidemic Influenza: A Virus Disease,” Lancet, May 11, 1935, 1118–24.

155 a report from late in that decade: George A. Denison and J. D. Dowling, “Rabies in Birmingham, Alabama,” JAMA, July 29, 1939, 390–95.

155 more than 250 deaths were logged: Ibid.

157 as the Hurston scholar Robert Haas points out: Robert Haas, “Might Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie Woods Be Dying of Rabies? Considerations from Historical Medicine,” Literature and Medicine 19, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 209, 211–18.

157 Hurston’s brother and first husband: Ibid., 209–11.

157 a more intriguing and ultimately more plausible: Robert Haas, “The Story of Louis Pasteur and the Making of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Famous Film Influencing a Famous Novel?” Literature/Film Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2004): 12–19.

158 “Somehow, I talked my mother into taking me”: Stanley Wiater, Matthew R. Bradley, and Paul Stuve, eds., The Twilight and Other Zones: The Dark Worlds of Richard Matheson (New York: Citadel Press/Kensington, 2009), 12.

158 “Those were very bad years”: Douglas Winter, Faces of Fear: Encounters with the Creators of Modern Horror (New York: Berkley Books, 1985), 28.

160 has been appropriated by American fiction: See W. B. Seabrook, The Magic Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929).

160 “Anubis”: Paul Gagne, The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), 24.

160 “basically ripped off” Matheson’s vision: Joe Kane, Night of the Living Dead (New York: Kensington, 2010), 22.

160 pooled six hundred dollars apiece: Gagne, Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh, 21, 29–32.

161 “the post-millennial ghoul of the moment”: Warren St. John, “Market for Zombies? It’s Undead (Aaahhh!)” New York Times, March 26, 2006.

161 The sci-fi blog io9.com made a chart: http://io9.com/5070243/.

161 zombie booms correlated with Republican rule: Peter Rowe, “With Obama Election Comes the Return of the Vampire,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 8, 2008.

162–63 The film’s director, Danny Boyle, says: Matthew Hays, “Return of the Killer Zombies!” Mirror (Montreal), June 26, 2003.

162n “Continue the termination. Don’t stop believing”: Chuck Klosterman, “How Modern Life Is Like a Zombie Onslaught,” New York Times, December 3, 2010.

164 Late one summer morning in 1953: Homer D. Venters et al., “Rabies in Bats in Florida,” American Journal of Public Health 44, no. 2 (1954): 182–85.

164 he remembered something he had read: St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 1960.

164 Beginning in 1906, ranches in southern Brazil: Paul W. Clough, “Rabies in Bats,” Annals of Internal Medicine 42, no. 6 (1955): 1330–34.

165 In 1911, a São Paulo laboratory: Aurelio Málaga-Alba, “Vampire Bat as a Carrier of Rabies,” American Journal of Public Health 44, no. 7 (1954): 909–18.

165 the scientific community in Brazil was convinced: David Brown, Vampiro: The Vampire Bat in Fact and Fantasy (Silver City, N.M.: High-Lonesome Books, 1994), 72.

165 tumbi baba in Paraguay, rabia paresiante in Argentina: Málaga-Alba, “Vampire Bat as a Carrier of Rabies.”

165 devastation brought by aerial assault: Victor Carneiro, “Transmission of Rabies by Bats in Latin America,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 10 (1954): 775–80.

165 The first human deaths attributed to rabies: Holman E. Williams, “Bat Transmitted Paralytic Rabies in Trinidad,” Canadian Veterinary Journal 1, no. 1 (1960): 20–24.

165 Since dog rabies had been eliminated: Carneiro, “Transmission of Rabies by Bats in Latin America.”

165 In the three decades that followed, eighty-nine humans: Williams, “Bat Transmitted Paralytic Rabies in Trinidad.”

165 In 1951, a Mexican man, prior to succumbing: Málaga-Alba, “Vampire Bat as a Carrier of Rabies.”

166 By the end of 1965, infected bats: George M. Baer and Devil Bill Adams, “Rabies in Insectivorous Bats in the United States, 1953–65,” Public Health Reports 85, no. 7 (1970): 637–46.

166 today, only Hawaii’s bats are rabies-free: Catherine Brown et al., “Compendium of Animal Rabies Prevention and Control,” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 239, no. 5 (2011): 609–18.

166 Bat bites are now the cause: Web site of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

166 anyone who awakens with a bat: Ibid.

166 a letter to the Lancet in 1983: Jane Teas, “Could AIDS Agent Be a New Variant of African Swine Fever Virus?” (letter), Lancet 321, no. 8330 (1983): 923.

167 In late 1984, a research team at Harvard: Mirko Grmek, History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 80–81.

167 A short June 1987 letter to the Lancet: F. Noireau, “HIV Transmission from Monkey to Man” (letter), Lancet 329, no. 8548 (1987), 1498–99.

167 The following month Abraham Karpas: Abraham Karpas, “Origin of the AIDS Virus Explained?” New Scientist, July 16, 1987.

168 One AIDS researcher interviewed teens: Diane Goldstein, Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004), 85.

168 “The first one I heard was about a sailor”: Ibid., 86.

168 in Scotland, a focus group convened: Jenny Kitzinger and David Miller, “‘African AIDS’: The Media and Audience Beliefs,” in AIDS: Rights, Risk, and Reason, ed. Peter Aggleton, Peter Davies, and Graham Hart (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 40–41.

169 In 1990, an AIDS reearcher in Punta Gorda: Stephanie Kane, AIDS Alibis: Sex, Drugs, and Crime in the Americas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 55.

169 In their version, which has circulated: Heike Behrend, “The Rise of Occult Powers, AIDS, and the Roman Catholic Church in Western Uganda,” in AIDS and Religious Practice in Africa, ed. Felicitas Becker and P. Wenzel Geissler (Boston: Brill, 2009), 36n9.

169 traced this myth back to a 1991 story: Sunday Mail (Harare), Sept. 29, 1991, quoted in Alexander Rödlach, Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2006), 160–61.

170 In some African countries, the white man: Behrend, “Rise of Occult Powers,” 36n9.

171 Just before the tunnel opened, one poll: Julian Barnes, Letters from London (New York: Vintage, 1995), 288.

171 in an earlier survey, carried out: New York Times, Dec. 26, 1985.

171 “The Channel Tunnel is a violation”: Eve Darian-Smith, Bridging Divides: The Channel Tunnel and English Legal Identity in the New Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 149.

171 “the blessing of insularity,” one member: Ibid., 147.

172 “The commercial began sedately”: S. J. Taylor, Shock! Horror! The Tabloids in Action (London: Corgi, 1992), 34–35.

174 security fences with animal-proof mesh: Darian-Smith, Bridging Divides, 146–48.

174 its PR handlers revealed to the media: New York Times, Feb. 17, 1994.

174 “as if lining up behind Mitterrand”: Barnes, Letters from London, 287–88.

175 most recent rabid animal to be unwittingly imported: BBC News, April 26, 2008.

175 more than ninety Americans contracted in 2003: Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Monkeypox Cases Surge in Rural Areas as Price of the Victory over Smallpox,” New York Times, Aug. 30, 2010.

175 a survey of 122 human cases in Bangladesh: Stephen Luby et al., “Recurrent Zoonotic Transmission of Nipah Virus into Humans, Bangladesh, 2001–2007,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 15, no. 8 (2009).

176 In Afghanistan, the nation’s lone pig: Reuters, April 30, 2009.

176 Tunisia went sofar as to ban: News24, Oct. 6, 2009.

176 among newspaper cartoonists in Muslim countries: Anti-Defamation League, “Arab Cartoonists Use Swine Flu Theme to Mock Israeli Leaders,” Jewish State, May 22, 2009.

176 an Egyptian cleric, Sheikh Ali Osman: “Fatwa in Egypt: Source of Pigs Is Jews,” Al Bawaba, May 11, 2009.

177 Video footage shows workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYB4sDKh3FI.

177 Other amateur footage showed pigs brained: Michael Slackman, “Cleaning Cairo, but Taking a Livelihood,” New York Times, May 25, 2009.

182 As she sat beside her mother: Jeanna Giese’s personal Web site, http://site.jeannagiese.com/My_Story.html.

182 Later, Giese showed the tiny wound: “The Girl Who Survived Rabies,” Extraordinary People, Discovery Channel (2006).

187 it had been shown in a 1992 study: Brian Paul Lockhart, Noel Tordo, and Henri Tsiang, “Inhibition of Rabies Virus Transcription in Rat Cortical Neurons with the Dissociative Anesthetic Ketamine,” Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 36, no. 2 (1992): 1750–55.

188 At 10:00 p.m. on the evening of October 10, 1970: Michael A. Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies: A Case Report,” Annals of Internal Medicine 76, no. 6 (1972): 931–42.

188 Over the next few days, Winkler’s condition: Ibid.

189 Although no virus was isolated: Ibid.

189 After days spent motionless in a coma: Ibid.

189 Winkler’s clinicians—led by Dr. Michael A. Hattwick: Ibid.

190 On August 8, 1972, a forty-five-year-old Argentinian woman: Casimiro Porras et al., “Recovery from Rabies in Man,” Annals of Internal Medicine 85, no. 1 (1976): 44–48.

190 One was a New York laboratory worker: Centers for Disease Control, “Rabies in a Laboratory Worker,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 26 (1977): 183–84.

190 The second, a nine-year-old boy in Mexico: Lucia Alvarez et al., “Partial Recovery from Rabies in a Nine-Year-Old Boy,” Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal 13, no. 12 (1994): 1154–55.

190 a six-year-old girl bitten by a street dog: S. N. Madhusudana et al., “Partial Recovery from Rabies in a Six-Year-Old Girl,” International Journal of Infectious Diseases 6, no. 1 (2002): 85–86.

192 In a video made by her doctors: Online resource accompanying Rodney E. Willoughby et al., “Survival After Treatment of Rabies with Induction of Coma,” New England Journal of Medicine 352, no. 24 (2005): 2508–14.

192 But by the time a second video was made: Online resource accompanying William T. Hu et al., “Long-Term Follow-up After Treatment of Rabies by Induction of Coma,” New England Journal of Medicine 357, no. 9 (2007): 945–46.

193 In the spring of 2011, Giese graduated: Mark Johnson, “Rabies Survivor Jeanna Giese Graduates from College,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 8, 2011.

193 On her YouTube channel, she has posted: Jeanna Giese’s YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/JeannaGieseRabies01#p/u.

193 spelled out various unique features of Giese’s case: Willoughby et al., “Survival After Treatment of Rabies with Induction of Coma.”

194 On a Web site hosted by the Medical College of Wisconsin: Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin rabies registry home page, http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/33223/router.asp.

194 In 2011, Precious Reynolds: Stephen Magagnini, “Scrappy 8-Year-Old from Humboldt Beats All Odds in Her Battle Against Rabies,” Sacramento Bee, June 13, 2011, 1B.

195 Reynolds remained in a coma: Erin Allday, “Rabies: Humboldt Girl Beats Virus Against Odds,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2011, A1.

195 Reynolds left UC Davis Children’s Hospital: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/06/22/girl-heads-home-after-surviving-rabies/.

195 six out of thirty-five cases: Ferris Jabr, “Rabies May Not Be the Invincible Killer We Thought,” New Scientist, June 21, 2011.

196 a thirty-three-year-old man treated at the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital: Thiravat Hemachudha et al., “Rabies,” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports 6, no. 6 (2006): 460–68.

196 Thiravat Hemachudha, was a vocal skeptic: “The Girl Who Survived Rabies.”

196 in a subsequent paper, he and his colleagues: Henry Wilde, Thiravat Hemachudha, and Alan C. Jackson, “Viewpoint: Management of Human Rabies,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 102, no. 10 (2008): 979–82.

196 Jackson penned a dissenting editorial: Alan C. Jackson, “Recovery from Rabies,” New England Journal of Medicine 352, no. 24 (2005): 2549–50.

196 he remains unconvinced, and for an intriguing reason: Alan C. Jackson, “Why Does the Prognosis Remain So Poor in Human Rabies?” Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy 8, no. 6 (2010): 623–25.

197 Pasteur himself recorded the case of a dog: Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies,” quoting Louis Pasteur, Charles Chamberland, and Emile Roux, “Nouveaux faits pour servir à la connaissance de la rage,” Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, Série III, Sciences de la Vie 95 (1882): 1187–92.

197 recovery from rabies has been documented: Theodore C. Doege and Robert L. Northrop, “Evidence for Inapparent Rabies Infection,” Lancet, Oct. 5, 1974, 826–29.

197 One early nineteenth-century physician claimed in the Lancet: “Preventive and Curative Treatment of Rabies,” Lancet, September 29, 1838, 55–58.

197 reported recovery from rabies after they transfused serum: “Rabies,” Medical Annals of the District of Columbia 33, April 1964: 158–59.

197 nine cases of reported recovery: Hattwick et al., “Recovery from Rabies.”

197 A survey for serum rabies antibodies: Ibid.

197 a case report that detailed an apparently unvaccinated survivor: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Presumptive Abortive Human Rabies—Texas, 2009,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 59, no. 7 (2010): 185–90.

198 At home, the girl’s headaches resumed: Ibid.

198 Despite an extensive workup: Ibid.

198 The next day, the CDC ran tests: Ibid.

199 On March 14, the girl received a dose: Ibid.

199 “we need to focus more on prevention”: Barbara Juncosa, “Hope for Rabies Victims: Unorthodox Coma Therapy Shows Promise,” Scientific American, Nov. 21, 2008.

203 it was probably Thomas Aquino’s dog: Merritt Clifton, “How Not to Fight a Rabies Epidemic: A History in Bali,” Asian Biomedicine 4, no. 4 (2010): 663–70.

203 But enforcement of this law: Ibid.

204 Two months after Thomas’s dog: Ibid.

205 When his mother took him to the hospital: Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Threat Gets Ever More Real,” Jakarta Post, Jan. 9, 2009.

205 It took two more deaths: Clifton, “How Not to Fight a Rabies Epidemic.”

206 in Kazakhstan: International Society for Infectious Diseases, ProMED correspondence, July 19, 2011.

206 dog bites are still responsible for: The CDC’s Rabies in the U.S. and Around the World page, http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/index.html.

206 In South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province: Chris Bateman, “AIDS Fuels Ownerless Feral Dog Populations,” South African Medical Journal 95, no. 2 (2005): 78–79.

207 But vaccination campaigns in dogs: Partners for Rabies Prevention’s introduction to the Blueprint for Rabies Prevention and Control, http://www.rabiesblueprint.com/spip.php?rubrique5.

207 the cost of a full course of: WHO Media Centre’s Rabies Fact Sheet, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs099/en/.

209 the government had removed from targeted regions: Desy Nurhayati, “Mass Culling of Stray Dogs to Continue Amid Protests,” Jakarta Post, Nov. 6, 2009.

209 one Australian woman described how her own dog: “Bali Dog Cull Shocks Aussies,” Herald Sun, March 1, 2009.

209 Another Australian, a chef, witnessed: Ibid.

210 Krishna pointed out that it was in 1860: http://bluecrossofindia.org/abc.html.

210 But imported vaccines, which have been proven protective: Luh De Suryani, “Vaccines Help Dogs Fight Rabies in Short-Term,” Jakarta Post, Feb. 12, 2010.

211 281 dogs had been destroyed: “Hundreds of Dogs Put Down, Vaccinated Against Rabies in Bali,” Jakarta Post, Dec. 18, 2008.

211 its efforts to contain rabies on Bukit: Luh De Suryani, “Denpasar Goes on Alert as More Rabid Dogs Found,” Jakarta Post, Jan. 9, 2009.

211 scores of high-ranking local government officials: Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Death Toll Rises to Six,” Jakarta Post, Jan. 19, 2009.

211 despite the extermination of 26,705: Desy Nurhayati, “Mass Culling of Stray Dogs to Continue Amid Protests,” Jakarta Post, Nov. 6, 2009.

211 Thomas Aquino’s friend Freddy: Luh De Suryani, “Rabies Death Toll Rises to Six.”

211 his three-year-old neighbor Ketut Tangkas: Luh De Suryani, “Toddler Dies from Suspected Rabies,” Jakarta Post, Jan. 6, 2009.

213 immune dogs, or “warrior dogs”: Trisha Sertori, “Janice Girardi: Trusting in Warrior Dogs,” Jakarta Post, March 29, 2010.

217 Niels Pedersen, even gives some credence: Bali: Island of the Dogs (2006).

217 In addition to supplying owners with protection: A. Agung Gde Putra, K. Gunata Dan, and Gde Asrama, “Dog Demography in Badung District the Province of Bali and Their Significance to Rabies Control” (paper presented at Konferensi Ilmiah Veteriner Nasional XI, Semarang, Central Java, Oct. 11–13, 2010).

221 Bali’s staggering canine turnover rate: Ibid.

221 abandoning the goal of eradicating rabies: Luh De Suryani, “Administration Pushes Back Rabies-Free Deadline to 2015,” Jakarta Post, May 26, 2011.

222 “But Walt could see the drama”: Didier Ghez, ed., Walt’s People—Volume 10 (New York: Xlibris, 2010), 146.

223 “there was no out but to kill the dog”: Ibid., 145.

223 called the ending “child abuse”: C. Jerry Kutner, “Good Dog, Bad Dog: The Horror of Old Yeller,” Bright Lights Film Journal, April 2001, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/32/oldyeller.php.

223 “still doesn’t forgive us”: Didier Ghez, Walt’s People, 145.

225 In July 2009, though, a suspiciously erratic animal was spotted: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/zoo/09vet07.pdf.

226 raccoons thrive more today in urban: Samuel I. Zeveloff, Raccoons: A Natural History (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 75.

226 the raccoon eats everything: Paul Rezendes, Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 162–63.

226 “one of the most intensive wildlife rabies outbreaks”: Eugene Linden and Hannah Bloch, “Beware of Rabies,” Time, Aug. 23, 1993.

226 Before the mid-1970s, raccoon rabies: Meghan E. Jones et al., “Environmental and Human Demographic Features Associated with Epizootic Raccoon Rabies in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia,” Journal of Wildlife Diseases 39, no. 4 (2003): 869–74.

226 more than thirty-five hundred raccoons: Suzanne R. Jenkins and William G. Winkler, “Descriptive Epidemiology from an Epizootic of Raccoon Rabies in the Middle Atlantic States, 1982–1983,” American Journal of Epidemiology 126, no. 3 (1987): 429–37.

226 The mid-Atlantic saw its first case: Victor F. Nettles et al., “Rabies in Translocated Raccoons,” American Journal of Public Health 69, no. 6 (1979): 601–2.

227 Within three decades, rabid raccoons: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Update: Raccoon Rabies Epizootic—United States and Canada, 1999,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 49, no. 2 (2000): 31–35.

227 updates to its online rabies map: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Web site, http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/cd/animal_rabies_2010_mn.pdf.

227 rabid raccoons were staggering out: Ibid., http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/cd/cdrab-borough.shtml.

234–35 Back in 1982, a Yale researcher named Thomas Lentz: Thomas Lentz et al., “Is the Acetylcholine Receptor a Rabies Virus Receptor?” Science 215, no. 4529 (1982): 182–84.

235 in a subsequent paper eight years later: Thomas Lentz, “Rabies Virus Binding to an Acetylcholine Receptor α-subunit Peptide,” Journal of Molecular Recognition 3, no. 2 (1990): 82–88.

235 after treatment with the molecule, 80 percent: Priti Kumar et al., “Transvascular Delivery of Small Interfering RNA to the Central Nervous System,” Nature 448 (2007): 39–43.

235 in March 2011, a team at Oxford: BBC News, March 20, 2011.

236 “Cerberus stood agape”: From Virgil’s Georgics. See John Jackson trans., Virgil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), 101.

NOTES