Bill Wasik: Rabid (2012, Viking)
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2012 by Viking.
One day when I was in college. Was waiting to hang out with a friend later in the evening, so spent the day wandering aimlessly. Went to Kramers, where I picked this up, and then walked back towards Capitol South and spent three or four hours on a bench in front of the White House reading this. What a spooky virus.
A photo posted by @dvmheather on Sep 28, 2015 at 5:44am PDT
I've had this book forever and finally read it after a staff member starting insisting that she had rabies. A stray cat bit her and died a few days later. (In my mind there is an equal chance that the staff member was poisonous to the cat.) The cat was tested and was rabies-free so all was well for the humans involved. It didn't change things for the cat.The first few chapters caused mass giggling in my office.First up this is description of how Louis Pasteur collected saliva to use in developing his vaccines.
".. watching Pasteur perform this trick with a glass tube held in his mouth, as two confederates with gloved hands pinned …
A photo posted by @dvmheather on Sep 28, 2015 at 5:44am PDT
I've had this book forever and finally read it after a staff member starting insisting that she had rabies. A stray cat bit her and died a few days later. (In my mind there is an equal chance that the staff member was poisonous to the cat.) The cat was tested and was rabies-free so all was well for the humans involved. It didn't change things for the cat.The first few chapters caused mass giggling in my office.First up this is description of how Louis Pasteur collected saliva to use in developing his vaccines.
".. watching Pasteur perform this trick with a glass tube held in his mouth, as two confederates with gloved hands pinned down a rabid bulldog."
My confederates can't hold a mildly pissed off cat with gloves on sometimes. I pointed this out to them. They pointed out that the next paragraph discusses how they had a loaded gun on hand in case someone got bit. They postulated that they could shoot me and get a new job if I tried to get them to do something as stupid as holding a rabid bulldog.Next it discusses getting the head removed from a rabies suspect.
"The first part of that process -- capturing and humanely dispatching a deranged animal -- is fairly standard stuff for your local vet."
Well, thanks for the vote of confidence but, yeah, no. Not routine. At least not the deranged animal part.
"If the vet is lucky, her hospital has seen enough suspected rabies cases that it has thought to keep a hacksaw handy."
Lucky? Is that her definition of lucky? Where does this woman practice? I think I'm lucky in that I'm not handling rabies suspects every day.One of my favorite vet school memories though involves putting a head back on after the brain was tested. I was in my pathology rotation and someone had mistakenly told the owners of a large dog that they could have the body back in pristine condition after the brain was removed. The pathologists were furious but couldn't say no after it was promised. I was just learning to quilt so I volunteered and spent an afternoon hand sewing a head back onto a body. I matched points and gathered as needed. The hair laid over the sutures to hide it. He looked amazing, if I do say so myself.Anyway, back to the book. I liked the chapters about the medical aspects of the disease even if some of them made me doubt my medical training.
"Dogs, (Aristotle) wrote with an odd confidence, suffer from only three diseases: lyssa, or rabies; cynanche, severe sore throat or tonsillitis; and podagra, or gout."
Well, there's four years of my life in vet school wasted if that's all they get.Other portions of this book discuss the idea that fear of rabies inspired the legends of the werewolf and the vampire. I wasn't as interested in those aspects as the medical ones. Your experience may be different.The end discusses a rabies outbreak started when someone smuggled a dog that ended up having rabies onto the previously rabies-free island of Bali in 2008. The government's first response was to order all dogs killed but of course, people hid their pets so that didn't work. Vaccination protocols were set up to contain the disease. And that's why governments don't let you just bring pets into their countries just willy-nilly, even if you are a celebrity and think that laws don't apply to you.This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story
Review to follow.
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 with over 5000 years of written history about it.
Rabid starts of with the first still known cases of Rabies-descriptions in literature and how people in ancient times tried to battle the fatal infection (which is so much fun to read, preparare to learn about proto-waterboarding and the rooster's anus!). It goes on to how Rabies transformed our culture and was at least …
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 with over 5000 years of written history about it.
Rabid starts of with the first still known cases of Rabies-descriptions in literature and how people in ancient times tried to battle the fatal infection (which is so much fun to read, preparare to learn about proto-waterboarding and the rooster's anus!). It goes on to how Rabies transformed our culture and was at least partially an inspiration for myths about werewolves, vampires (and of course, in more recent times: Zombies!) and how Pasteur went on to get a vaccine for the disease.
The last couple of chapter are on modern medicine: How outbreaks of Rabies in animal populations are controlled, different ideas on how the disease can may be cured if the vaccine failed (or wasn't there in the first place…) and even more fun: How proteins found in Rabies might be someday useful to deliver drugs to the brain, which is ± impossible today due to the lockdown imposed by the blood-brain-barrier.
Fun and quick to read, even if the beginning might make you paranoid of contracting a nearly always fatal disease. In exchange for being scared senseless you will learn a lot of medical & cultural history and modern medicine. That's a fair tradeoff to me.
Weird. I listened to the audiobook of this a few year's ago but for some reason never marked it as read. Don't remember exactly when I listened to it though. Fantastic book. Rabies sounds like an absolutely terrifying thing to die of. This tracks its horrifying history and the bizarre path to the treatment to avoid getting it. Crazy story well told.
