Rabid
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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98 “One of the first things I can remember”: Unpublished autobiographical notes, 2, James Mease Archive, UCLA Biomedical Library.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.
Chapter 5: King Louis
For the essential facts of Pasteur’s life we have relied primarily on two sources. The first is the extensive biography penne
d soon after Pasteur’s death by his son-in-law, René Vallery-Radot, and translated into English in 1916 by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. The second is Patrice Debré’s 1995 biography, translated in 2005 by Elborg Forster. Below we cite only specific quotes from these works, as well as facts drawn from other works; uncited facts may be assumed to derive from Vallery-Radot, Debré, or both.
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.
Chapter 6: The Zoonotic Century
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, 200
9), 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.