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

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

by Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy (Goodreads Author)

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 674 ratings · 172 reviews

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...more

Hardcover, 275 pages

Published July 19th 2012 by Viking Adult

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Aug 26, 2012 Marin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic

I have a confession to make. While I enjoy non-fic books, due to the general lack of plot payoff, I am often not compelled to finish them. In fact, I usually lose interest halfway through and abandon them in favor of some fiction trifle.

There was no way that was happening with Rabid. Wasik and Murphy have crafted a book that is equal parts biology, medicine, anthropology and horror story. Its odd to use an adjective like "gripping" in description of a science book, but boy howdy is it ever! The...more

9 likes · like · see review

Oct 06, 2012 Jason Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read it. You won't want to think about it, but you will. Once you have read it you will question squirrels' behavior, but eventually you will get over it.

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 12, 2013 Uco Library rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: emily-brown

Modern medicine has made us a comfortable people- it’s easy for us to forget the ravages of polio, measles, and whooping cough because most of us have never seen the disease. But there’s another virus, one that has always been around, that used to (and in some parts of the world, still does) boast a 100% kill rate: Rabies.

Most of us come into contact with rabies at our pets semi-annual rabies vaccinations at the vet. But rabies still poses a real threat- unvaccinated victim, leaving the disease...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Susan Olesen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd really like to give it 3 1/2 stars, because I liked it more than 3 but maybe not quite to a 4-level. Really, a very nice book that's chock full of info without ever really getting technical, so the average person can learn a tremendous amount without scratching their head.

The book provides a lovely overview of a virus that has plagued man for at least 4,000 years, the terror of which is probably greater than that of AIDS, which (in Western civilizations) you have a much greater chance of get...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, medicine, nonfiction, science, wish-it-had-been-fiction

WARNING: The subject matter of this review is somewhat gross.

I picked this up because of the excerpt in Wired magazine, which you can read here:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/201...

By the way, the article includes some of the best magazine art I've seen in years.

Because the magazine excerpt focuses on science, I thought the entire book would. I missed the words "cultural history" in the subtitle. So there's a lot about Louis Pasteur and Jekyll & Hyde and vampires and werewolves and zombie...more

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 21, 2012 Boris Limpopo rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 t...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rabies has been with- and horrified- people throughout history. The virus can infect any warm blooded creature and is nearly 100% fatal once symptoms show. It travels directly through the nervous system rather than the more usual route of the bloodstream, allowing it easy access to the brain. Once there, it takes over the victim’s actions, creating an aggressive, raving, biting disease vector in the place of the familiar creature or person.

The authors follow rabies through history, both medical...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 31, 2012 Ronkagrimaldi rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is a fascinating read—both the science and cultural history of rabies are described very well. The authors cover the disease from ancient Babylon (complete with an ancient joke) to modern times, with stops in Greece, medieval Europe and Victorian England. There is also an entire chapter devoted to Louis Pasteur, the creator (with a lot of help from his assistants) of the rabies vaccine. There is a lot about the history of dogs in our society, since dogs were the main carriers of rabies...more

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May 07, 2012 Madame X rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

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 sound...more

7 likes · like · see review

Mar 14, 2013 Christine Gaskins rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: virus

An informative document. It is written like a text book. For my self this probably would not have been interesting to go through as a written book. But as an audio it sounded like a very fun lecture.
Everything from "wives" tales to uneducated beliefs to the discovories of science is presented. Outbreak years are mentioned from all over the world. For example, the island of Bali never had a rabies threat until 2008, so when the first case was presented doctors did not worry. It took 150 deaths...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Bastian Greshake rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is the second book focussing on viruses (and more specific on zoonotic diseases) I've read this year, the first being Richard Preston's excellent The Hot Zone.

While Preston focuses his story on the scientific side of Ebola and a specific (possible) outbreak of the virus in the US the approach of Rabid is much broader. But that may not be too surprising, given that Ebola itself is the new kid on the zoonotic block. Especially compared to Rabies, one of the oldest known zoonotic pathogens wi...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book does a really great job of balancing the cultural history of rabies with the science of the disease. I appreciate that they mention specific literary works that mention the disease. Their chapter on Pasteur was great enough that I wonder why a movie hasn't been made of him recently. Overall, I thought this was a very good addition to my kindle library and plan on reading again in the future.
There are a couple points I had issue with. The book makes reference several times to people ca...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Laura Madsen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, non-fiction

Really fascinating book. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a veterinarian and am slightly obsessed with public health and infectious diseases!)

Rabies is virus which causes a virtually 100% fatal neurologic disease in all mammals, including humans. Even in the 21st century, over 50,000 people worldwide die of rabies every year. It is a horrible death of alternating periods of lucidity and psychosis, pain, fever, convulsions, hallucinations and hydrophobia (pathologic fear of water).

Wasik...more Really fascinating book. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am a veterinarian and am slightly obsessed with public health and infectious diseases!)

Rabies is virus which causes a virtually 100% fatal neurologic disease in all mammals, including humans. Even in the 21st century, over 50,000 people worldwide die of rabies every year. It is a horrible death of alternating periods of lucidity and psychosis, pain, fever, convulsions, hallucinations and hydrophobia (pathologic fear of water).

Wasik and Murphy weave together a history of rabies and civilization. Although many of the scary epidemic infectious diseases of humans, including Ebola, West Nile, SARS, swine flu, and hanta, are zoonotic (transmitted from animals), only rabies was known to be zoonotic before humanity ever considered the existence of bacteria and viruses. Think of bubonic plague (“The Black Death”): people didn’t realize it was caused by a bacterium spread by the bite of a rat flea. But rabies: slobbering psychotic dog bites human, human turns into slobbering psychotic animal. It was obvious even four millennia ago that rabies was transmitted by animals, particularly canines.

The book looks at theories, preventatives and “cures” over the millennia (the most effective preventative prior to vaccination was cauterizing the fresh bite with a red hot poker); history (St. Hubert is the healer of rabies sufferers); mythology (the slaver of Cerberus spreads both rabies and aconite); connections of rabies to werewolf and vampire legends; the handful of documented survivals of rabid humans; weird ideas that people have had to prevent rabies in dogs (one theory suggested rabies spontaneously arose in dogs due to sexual frustration and suggested prevention by creating “doggy bordellos”); rabies in various species (l’enfant du diable = the devil’s child, a skunk); history of canine mass killings in an attempt to stop epidemics; and a recent rabies epidemic on the supposedly rabies-free island of Bali.

The most fascinating chapter explains how Louis Pasteur developed the first rabies vaccine in the late 1800’s. In fifteen years of veterinary practice, I have never seen a case of rabies and hope I never do. Pasteur (who is also the father of pasteurization and food safety) maintained rabid animals in his lab, putting himself and his staff at continual risk of gruesome death. By repeatedly transferring rabies directly from one rabbit’s brain to another they developed a highly virulent strain, and then to “tame” that strain to be a vaccine, they left the rabbit’s spinal cord out to air-dry for a few days. Imagine how terrifying it must have been for him to inject that dried-out rabid spinal cord into the young boy who was the first test subject. The boy survived both the initial rabid bite and the cure.

Recommended for anyone who likes history, biography or medicine.

And a soapbox moment: Make sure your dogs, cats and ferrets are current on their rabies immunizations, and never approach an ill or strangely-behaving bat, skunk or raccoon.
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Aug 15, 2012 Hadrian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, medicine, history, society-and-culture

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 werew...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 08, 2012 lancelot schaubert rated it 3 of 5 stars

Over break, I started Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and I must say it’s one of the most brutal pieces of nonfiction to cross my desk. Wasik and Murphy headed up a research team for years, digging into the origins of the disease that took down Old Yeller. (Sorry to ruin it, Kiddo. The dog gets rabies).

They begin by blitzkrieging through a patchwork, non-chronolgical history of rabies in a tone that some might call disturbing and others downright macabre. Most insi...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Christie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-paranormal-scavenger-hunt, books-with-pictures, history, picked-up-because-of-cover, random-nonfiction

First Sentence: "Ours is a domesticated age."

In this book, the authors explore the history of rabies, its treatment and prevention, and the human fascination with this terrifying disease. The book breaks down the science of rabies in a way that is easy for the layperson to understand. It also tracks how human contact with rabies has affected all aspects of our culture from novels (I Am Legend), movies ("Cujo"), and even our language ("she was a rabid Twilight fan"). We can trace our vampire, wer...more First Sentence: "Ours is a domesticated age."

In this book, the authors explore the history of rabies, its treatment and prevention, and the human fascination with this terrifying disease. The book breaks down the science of rabies in a way that is easy for the layperson to understand. It also tracks how human contact with rabies has affected all aspects of our culture from novels (I Am Legend), movies ("Cujo"), and even our language ("she was a rabid Twilight fan"). We can trace our vampire, werewolf, and zombie myths to the very real danger of rabies.

This is a fascinating read. Let me just say I will definitely be making an appointment to get my cats' rabies boosters updated soon. I never want to be faced with a rabid animal because that is some messed up stuff. Of course, in the US you are more likely to be murdered than bitten by a rabid animal which is comforting thanks to good preventative care, other countries are not so lucky. I learned many new things I did not know before: a human infected with rabies will likely exhibit hypersexuality before succumbing to their illness, contrary to popular belief human rabies shots (given after a suspected rabid animal bite) are made up of 4 shots given in the arm now (not the 15-30 shots in the stomach that most of our mothers would have us believe), and it was once believed that rabies spontaneously appeared in animals because of sexual deprivation. It is a book that is tragic and humorous by turns. The science is approachable and the book is well-organized and highly readable.

Some words of caution if you are planning to read this book. This is not a book for the squemish by any means. There are some very frank medical discussions throughout the book and the authors do not mince words. Also, if you are a huge animal lover, like someone who bursts into uncontrollable sobbing at the mere mention of "Old Yeller" or when that one Sarah Maclachlan song comes on because it reminds you of the ASPCA commercial run far, far away from this book. The rabies treatment for humans was/is bad enough, you do not want to put yourself through what they did/do to animals (all I will say is that if you love your animals please, please vaccinate them and spay/neuter them. Prevention is the best medicine). The book also gives away plots and endings for some other books, such as Cujo, Their Eyes Were Watching God, I Am Legend, and Old Yeller (you have probably been living under a rock your whole life if you don't know how that one ends) so if you are a person who hates spoilers of any kind you have been warned, but really it's nothing more than what you get in the average goodreads review. (In fact, probably putting the titles in this review counts as spoilers to some people.)

I can definitely see why this book made Publishers' Weekly's list of the best nonfiction of 2012. It is a very good book that will make you think. I recommend it to anyone interested in public health, cultural effects of diseases, and the history of medicine.

Paranormal scavenger hunt: scientist(less)

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Aug 01, 2012 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, nonfiction-science, standalone, nonfiction-history

This is a completely fascinating book. Prior to reading it, my main knowledge of rabies came from that episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman where her adopted son’s dog gets rabies and bites her other adopted son’s fiancee. I didn’t really understand how much of a plague it used to be, but I did know that you’re required to get your pets vaccinated for it.

I learned SO MUCH from this book! And it wasn’t a struggle to read or absorb the information either. Wasik and Murphy strike that hard to find b...more This is a completely fascinating book. Prior to reading it, my main knowledge of rabies came from that episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman where her adopted son’s dog gets rabies and bites her other adopted son’s fiancee. I didn’t really understand how much of a plague it used to be, but I did know that you’re required to get your pets vaccinated for it.

I learned SO MUCH from this book! And it wasn’t a struggle to read or absorb the information either. Wasik and Murphy strike that hard to find balance in writing science for the layman. They explain complex, scientific things without so much scientific terminology as to be a struggle for the average reader but with enough so that you’ve still learned something.

The basic structure of the book is typical of a history book. In fact, think of it kind of as a scientific history book. It starts with the earliest accounts of rabies and moves up through time to the present. The strongest passages are: Greco-Roman history of the disease, Dark Ages history of the disease, Pasteur’s creation of a vaccination, and the modern day outbreak in Bali. These strike the perfect balance of discussing the understanding and treatment of the disease and the reflections of rabies and fear of rabies in popular culture of that time period.

The other sections, particularly the era after the vaccine to about the 1980s, suffer a bit from a lack of focus and direction. There’s a part where the authors try to convince us that zombies are a reflection of a latent fear of rabies. Ok? But that’s rather speculative compared to the rest of the book. There are other elements of pop culture that are nowhere near as loosely connected that they discuss, such as the actual rabies books and movies that came out in the UK when the Chunnel was put in and people were afraid that rabid animals would come over to the island nation from France. That is a tight, interesting connection. The zombie one was a bit of a stretch.

The book also explores other zoonotic diseases (diseases that originate in non-human animals). Although this is also technically not rabies, this connection makes a lot more sense, particularly since more started cropping up in the 20th century after rabies was beaten down by vaccination.

So, although the book struggles a bit during the early 20th century time period, the rest of it is very well put-together. It is written at the appropriate level for a popular science history book. It is easy to learn from and includes lots of fascinating tid-bits in addition to the basic rabies history and information. It also demonstrates as a kind of side-story the history of public health. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of rabies, the history of vaccination, and most especially to those with an interest in public health issues.

Check out my full review (featuring select quotes).(less)

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Sep 06, 2012 Charlie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociology

**Disclaimer, many of the books I tear through are actually audio books I listen to while driving or working. This was one.

I thought this book was really interesting for the most part. There was a fairly technical chapter in the middle that was quite dry in dealing with some of the medical advancements preceding Pasteur, but other than that it was a fantastic read. I had no idea rabies was so deadly a virus and that it has struck fear into the heart of humanity since time immemorial. We no longe...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Birgit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Many a virus has left its fatal mark on us throughout history, but none is as deeply steeped in legend as the most fatal of them all, the rabies virus. In Rabid Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy present an all-encompassing survey on the topic - from the early days to mythology, from literature to the latest in medicine.
At first glance you might get the impression that the focus in the book is heavily on the medical aspect, yet the authors offer a multifaceted depiction, delving into various areas on...more

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Apr 22, 2013 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

First, I should mention that I am a biologist with a background in microbiology. This directly colors my view of this book. On the plus side, I found it entertainingly written and not at all stuffy and academic. It successfully covers a great deal of interesting encounters with rabies and presents them in a compelling way. On the negative side, I found some of the language overly dramatic and downright misleading. The books repeatedly applies words like evil, malignant and satanic to a virus, wh...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Mary rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book (written by a science writer and veterinarian) mainly focuses on the cultural (written and literary) history of rabies, a disease which is almost 100% fatal if not treated shortly after being bitten by an infected animal and which has been known and dreaded by humans for centuries.

I was a bit disappointed as the first half of the book focused a bit dryly on the writings of what we know to be rabies today from early civilization through modern times, in both scientific and fictional lit...more This book (written by a science writer and veterinarian) mainly focuses on the cultural (written and literary) history of rabies, a disease which is almost 100% fatal if not treated shortly after being bitten by an infected animal and which has been known and dreaded by humans for centuries.

I was a bit disappointed as the first half of the book focused a bit dryly on the writings of what we know to be rabies today from early civilization through modern times, in both scientific and fictional literature. The authors even try to suggest that fictitious characters like werewolves, vampires and zombies were "inspired" by man's fear of the disease, which I think is a BIG stretch, at least for vampires and zombies. Rabies as the inspiration for werewolves, who turn into crazed animals upon the bit of another werewolf, and then in turn bite (and infect others) seems more plausible (although the authors note that there no recorded case of rabies being transmitted from one human to another). The last part of the book which details the development of a vaccine in the 1890's, the stories of the precious few human survivors of confirmed rabies infection, as well as a recent outbreak in Indonesia, was the most interesting to me.

One thing I did learn: Rabies kills over 55,000 people every year. I'm never going to get near a stray dog or cat (dog bites are the most common cause of rabies in the world, primarily in Asia and Africa), nor any wildlife, especially raccoons or bats (the most common source of infection in the US (as most dogs & cats are vaccinated in the US)) ever again. Especially bats, there have been cases documented where people have been unknowingly infected by touching a bat to brush it off their face or shove it out the window (after it some how entered their house) and later died. The CDC recommends that ANY one who wakes up to find a bat in their room, or a child or mentally incapacitated person who is found to have a bat in their room should seek preventative care (series of 5 shots over 2 weeks) ASAP in case they were unwittingly exposed to rabies.(less)

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Sep 05, 2012 Margaret Sankey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Written by a pair of authors--a science and media writer and a veterinarian, this is a history of the long and terrifying relationship of humans with rabies, the virus that goes after the nervous system and until very recently, was always horrifyingly and unavoidably fatal. Ancient traces of the disease turn up in morbid Babylonian jokes, in the naming of aconite as wolfsbane for the way poisoning mimics rabies, the primitive "lyssa" fury of Homer's warriors, the appearance of the symptoms (hydr...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Andy Kramer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Andy by: Goodreads First Reads

Shelves: first-reads, nonfiction, science

I won this book a month ago through Goodreads First Reads, but I didn't pick this up until about a week ago. I'm glad I did. The book is very clearly written, and the authors were able to mix technical prose and artful commentary well. You could read this book in a long afternoon at the beach, or, as I did, in short installments of 1 or 2 chapters each day after work.

Other readers have criticized the meandering nature of the book, from covering the explicitly medical nature of the disease to th...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Kristi Thielen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Somewhat interesting book about the dreaded rabies virus. The book is stronger in later chapters which detail the stories of the (very) few people who have survived it and the medical efforts made to accomplish this.

Unfortunately, early chapters are given over to the eastern European myths of werewolves and vampires and the idea that these stories may have sprung from ancient memories of the appearance/behavior of people or dogs that had contracted rabies.

This argument isnt' terribly convincin...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Alexandra rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting cultural history that strays into academic mush too often, and while it clocked in at just under 300 pages, at least 200 of those pages were unnecessary. The introduction and the last three chapters are fascinating stuff, but would have made for a better magazine series of articles as opposed to a published book. While I learned some information, little of it felt like information I could carry to other sources, and the chapter on Pasteur and his developments of vaccinations did n...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Joyce added it

Why did I not know that Louis Pasteur and his group were the ones who developed the rabies vaccine? I guess I didn't see the movie. Or maybe I knew and forgot. That's happened a time or two. I learned that because of studying rabies, Pasteur's proteges laid the foundation for the study of immunology, developing serums against diphtheria, snake bites, TB, bubonic plague, whooping cough, and typhus. Now scientists are utilizing a "hollowed out" rabies virus to deliver medication directly to the br...more

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May 16, 2013 Matthew Galloway rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book started out really fascinatingly -- Wasik definitely does a great job when it comes to finding interesting historical resources. However, he does do this thing that frustrates me in many of these popular history sorts of books: ridiculing people of the past to get cheap laughs. Yeah, some of the ideas seem pretty outlandish, but they only had so much information. I doubt many of us would have done any better if we lived back then without the extra millennia of scientific discoveries (an...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Rebecca Schwarz rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio_unabridged

I was really excited about this book: Just my kind of popsci reading. Generally I like the books that the good people from Wired put out, but this one was another example of a great long-form essay ruined by trying to wedge it into a book... Some cultural history is okay, a few thoughts on warewolves and vampires and the possible ties these myths have with this virus, fine. But this material, along with synopses of barely related books like I Am Legion and Their Eyes Were Watching God, was total...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Sara Jane rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am a big sucker for the history, and I love how much this book had to teach me! My one complaint, though, is that the book calls itself a cultural history, but spends a lot of time instead on the actual medical history of the disease. The authors apparently have science background (makes sense), and the painstaking process by which rabies vaccine was developed (thank you, Pasteur!), the public health policy responses, and documented medical cases of rabies get more attention from the authors t...more

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Nov 29, 2012 R rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: medical, history-non-fiction

This is a really cool subject for a book. As the authors point out, rabies is such an unusual virus in so many ways -- from how it is contracted to its molecular structure. Those unique qualities have made its appearance over the course of history & into the present day a fascinating subject. Rabies has left its mark on history from the time when its causes were fundamentally misunderstood to the time not so long ago when doctors finally understood the cause -- but not the solution. Rabies h...more

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About Bill Wasik

Bill Wasik is a senior editor of Wired Magazine, and was previously a senior editor at Harper's Magazine. He has also contributed to McSweeney's and served as Editor of The Weekly Week. Mr. Wasik revealed himself in 2006 to be the inventor of the flash mob, having anonymously organized the first recognized examples in New York City during the summer of 2003. [1][2]

Wasik is the author of And Then T...more

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