Rabid

March 26, 2012
Rabies has not only wreaked havoc for 4,000 years on man and his best friend but also mirrors the history of medicine while generating vampire images that still frighten and fascinate us. In this ambitious and smart history of the virus, Wired senior editor Waski (And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture) and public health and veterinary expert Murphy (who are husband and wife) start with the Greeks and their love-hate relationship with their hounds, move to the Middle Ages—when Islamic scholars made the first real advances in understanding the disease—and barrel through to the revolutionary “germ theory” discoveries of the late 19th century. The authors track how science tried to tame the scourge, with its ravaging neurological effects. Yet the rare tales of modern survivors only underscore that, despite the existence of treatment through a series of injections, we’re at a stalemate in conquering rabies. Look for delightful detours into cultural manifestations of our fear of rabies, including a survey of vampire, werewolf, and zombie literature and films— from Charlotte Brontë to Anne Rice, and right up to the Twilight series. Agent: Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbit.

June 15, 2012
From a husband-and-wife team, a literate look at the history of one of humankind's oldest and most frightening scourges. Wired senior editor Wasik (And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, 2009) and veterinarian Murphy survey literature, cultural history and medical science to tell the story of a disease that has plagued humans wherever they have attracted the company of dogs and other feral animals. Rabies infects not only the bodies of the unfortunate few who have contracted the disease, but also more generally, our fears and imagination. The authors plausibly postulate that the "rage" that made Hector such a terrifying enemy in the Iliad was modeled on rabies; lyssa, the word that describes Hector's savagery, is the same term Greeks used to describe rabid dogs. So what makes rabid animals so mad? According to Wasik and Murphy, rabies is a slow-working virus that almost uniquely affects the nerves. Once in the brain, it inhibits the autonomic nervous system and manifests in the victim's foaming at the mouth and hydrophobia (aversion to water). According to the authors, rabies, for which there was no protection or cure until Louis Pasteur's vaccine of the 1880s, is the primary reason for humanity's long-term love-hate relationship with canines. "Rabies coevolved to live in the dog, and the dog coevolved to live with us," they write, "and this confluence, the three of us, is far too combustible a thing." Fear of rabies may have been behind some other ancient nightmares: the big, bad wolf of fairy tales, the werewolf and vampire of gothic romances and even the zombies so popular today. As entertaining as they are on rabies in culture, the authors also eruditely report on medicine and public health issues through history, from ancient Assyria to Bali to Manhattan in the last five years, showing that while the disease may be contained, it may never be fully conquered. Surprisingly fun reading about a fascinating malady.

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February 1, 2012

The source of a brain infection that causes horrid symptoms and is nearly always fatal, rabies has been feared through the ages. Here Wired senior editor Wasik departs from his bailiwick to join wife Murphy, who has degrees in public health and veterinary medicine, to offer a cultural history of the disease--the myths it engendered and how it reflects our fear of the wild both within us and outside us. In-house interest is sparking; watch.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2012
Journalist husband and veterinarian wife tell the story of one of humanity's biggest nightmares, the disease that turns man's best friend against him, rabies. The almost invariably fatal malady has dogged (sorry) us throughout the millennia we've cohabited with canines. Interesting enough, some of the earliest (Sumerian, Egyptian) recorded treatments were therapeutically shrewder than anything else before Pasteur's vaccine late in the nineteenth century. Wasik and Murphy present rabies' iconic status among zoonotic, or beast-to-human-transmitted, diseases, the deadliest of which, flu, doesn't begin to be as, uh, picturesque. They consider how rabies' appalling visible effects influenced popular images of the vampire and the werewolf. They hail twentieth-century medicine's great leap forward, thanks to microscopic technology, in discovering and combating zoonotic diseases, including recent elaborate and successful but controversial protocols through which late-stage sufferers have recovered. Their enlightening account of a 2008 outbreak in previously rabies-free Bali naturally leads to the quandary they present in conclusion, namely, that rabies might be eliminated if it weren't so rare nowadays and so expensive to prevent. Riveting medical reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

Starred review from June 1, 2012

Rabies strikes terror into the hearts of humankind like few other diseases because of the way it can turn a beloved pet (or person) into a foaming, frenzied beast who will suffer an agonizing death in nearly 100 percent of cases. Many people grew up with haunting images of Old Yeller, but, as husband-and-wife team Wasik (senior editor, Wired; And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture) and Murphy, a veterinarian, demonstrate, the fear of rabies dates back to ancient times. They place the world's deadliest virus in its historical and cultural context with a scientifically sound and compelling history that begins in ancient Mesopotamia and ends in 21st-century Bali. Highlights include chapters on Louis Pasteur, who developed the first rabies vaccine, and the few humans who have survived rabies infection. The authors also link rabies to myths and legends, including werewolves, vampires, and witches, and discuss rabies in literature and humankind's long, close relationship with dogs. VERDICT Readable, fascinating, informative, and occasionally gruesome, this is highly recommended for anyone interested in medical history or the cultural history of disease. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/12.]--Janet A. Crum, City of Hope Lib., Duarte, CA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.