The Victorian War on Rabies: Fear, Freedom, and the Mad Dog Panic
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.
- datakan
Strange article. So much focus on dogs with only one mention of bats who are the primary carrier and spreader of rabies.
- retrac
We're in a prolonged guerilla conflict in Canada. We are winning but the end is not in sight yet.
In Ontario every year the Ministry of Forestry distributes several million doses of rabies vaccine for wildlife. The goal is to immunize the majority of skunks, foxes, raccoons and the like, particularly in populated areas.
They air drop edible pellets with the live rabies vaccine; they are labeled "do not touch do not eat" because it can vaccinate most susceptible mammals, including humans.