Chapter 11 : The Ancient Curse: Rabies

Abstract:

Rabies is one of the oldest recognized zoonotic diseases. The first recorded description of canine rabies was apparently made by Democritus around 500 B.C.E. Aristotle, writing of rabies in his Natural History of Animals, described dogs suffering from a madness causing irritability and noted that other animals became diseased after being bitten by these sick dogs. Little has changed with this human-carnivore dynamic since the time of Aristotle’s observations. In most areas of the world where the disease is enzootic, dogs and other carnivores remain the predominant sources of human rabies virus infection. For the lucky few that live in countries where canine rabies has been eliminated, the epidemiology of human rabies continues to implicate bats as an important emerging rabies reservoir. Bats are also the focus of ongoing discovery of new lyssaviruses (15 total recognized or putative species), many of which are still poorly understood.