Staff Book and Media Recommendations

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

Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

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 to run its course (the symptoms don’t appear for as much as 30 days) are left with a horrible fight for life that often takes years of recuperation, that is if they survive at all.  Rabid describes the fight of a high-school girl as recently as 2004 in Wisconsin- she beat rabies, but just barely.