The Victorian War on Rabies: Fear, Freedom, and the Mad Dog Panic

The Victorian War on Rabies

In 19th-century Britain, rabies sparked a terrifying panic known as the Mad Dog crisis, where fear of hydrophobia outweighed actual mortality. I explore how public hysteria clashed with civil liberties, leading to fierce debates over muzzling dogs and the controversial rejection of Louis Pasteur's vaccine due to antivivisectionist pressure. Ultimately, strict controls and changing attitudes toward pets eradicated the disease from the UK by 1902.

"Most of the deaths recently declared by frightened jurymen to be caused by hydrophobia were, it seems to us, really caused by superstitious terror; died of fright would have been a more appropriate verdict."