The development of the virus concept as reflected in corpora of studies on individual pathogens. 4. Rabies--Two millennia of ideas and conjecture on the aetiology of a virus disease

Abstract

WHEN wRmUhBs of medical texts wish to remind their readers that virus disease is nothing new, they turn to the records of smallpox and of rabies. From antiquity, and through the centuries, the impact of smallpox on social and political history through the extent and severity of epidemics, and the high rate of mortality, has been considerable and equalled among the infectious diseases only by bubonic plague.' Rabies on the other hand never claimed large numbers of victims even in epidemic situations. In one outbreak which caused concern in nineteenth-century Lancashire, the total number of deaths in the year 1866 was reported to be thirty-six, and of this Fleming wrote: ".. . West Lancashire appeared to have become a centre from which it spread in various directions, until it became disseminated, and had attained the dimensions of a serious epizooty-formidable alike to mankind, as well as to the other domesticated animals".2 In a contemporary outbreak in Denmark, the number of cases totalled 227 dogs, nine cattle, six horses, five sheep, and a few cats. There were four human fatalities.3 Compared to the numerous shorter and sharper outbreaks of bubonic plague and smallpox in Europe during the centuries when they held sway, and when there were frequently tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of deaths in a few months,4 the figures for rabies appear almost insignificantly low. Nevertheless, rabies has captured the imagination of writers and thinkers from the time of antiquity. The alarming symptoms in man and dog alike, the prolonged suffering of the victims and the inevitable fatality of the established clinical disease: the distressing syndrome as a whole has meant that outbreaks of the disease have been meticulously recorded out of all proportion to the slight numbers of victims claimed in comparison with the major scourges of mankind. The manner of its transmission has ensured for rabies a unique position in the annals of infectious disease. The detailed descriptions *This work was made possible by a grant from the Wellcome Trust.

History of Rabies Research

“…He took saliva from a rabid dog and painted it with a small brush into incisions he had made in healthy animals, including other dogs, cats, and rabbits, and the animals subsequently developed rabies (Wilkinson, 1977). However, it is unclear if Zinke had read this article and whether or not it provided the inspiration for his experiments (Wilkinson, 1977). A few years earlier, in 1793, John Hunter (1754-1809) suggested evaluating the transmissibility of rabies between species and indicated that transmission by 3 incision and transfer of infected saliva on the point of a lancet should be feasible (Hunter, 1793).…”

“…These experiments proved that rabies was an infectious disease. In 1821, the French neurophysiologist François Magendie (1783Magendie ( -1855 reported the transmission of rabies to a dog by inoculation of saliva from a human case of rabies (Magendie, 1821), but there was no indication that he was familiar with the previous writings of either John Hunter or Georg Zinke (Wilkinson, 1977). However, it is unclear if Zinke had read this article and whether or not it provided the inspiration for his experiments (Wilkinson, 1977).…”

“…In 1879, Pierre-Victor Galtier (1846Galtier ( -1908, who was a professor at a veterinary school in Lyon, France, used rabbits in his rabies experiments, which was technically much less difficult and less dangerous than experiments using dogs and cats, and he noted the paralytic and convulsive features of the disease in this species (Galtier, 1879;Wilkinson, 1977). Experimental transmission from dogs to rabbits was also associated with a marked reduction in the incubation period of rabies to an average of 18 days in rabbits (versus about a month in dogs), in addition to the advantages of being relatively cheap, easy to handle, and easy to keep (Geison, 1995).…”

Rhabdovirus: Rabies

“…and dread it evoked in historians of the past. For a more thorough treatise, the interested reader is referred to Steele and Fernandez [ 12 ], Baer [ 13 ], and Wilkinson [ 14 ]. Most global reference languages singularly denote the terms damage, violence, fury, madness, or rage as literally synonymous with this affl iction.…”

Desarrollo de procesos biotecnológicos para la producción heteróloga de proteínas del virus de la rabia para su uso en medicina veterinaria

“…En escritos de Demócrito, Aristóteles, Hipócrates y Celsus se describen las características clínicas de la rabia (Fleming, 1872). Aristóteles escribió: "la enfermedad es fatal para el perro y para cualquier animal que pueda morder, excepto del hombre" (Wilkinson, 1977). En el año 100 AC, el médico Celsus describió la rabia humana y utilizó el término hidrofobia, que es una palabra derivada del griego y significa "miedo al agua".…”