SYMHC Classics: Rabies

Summary

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Stuff You Missed in History Class: "SYMHC Classics: Rabies"

Hosts: Holly Frey & Tracy V. Wilson
Release Date: August 30, 2025

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Overview

In this classic episode, Holly and Tracy revisit the fascinating and harrowing history of rabies. They explore humanity's long struggle with this notorious disease—from ancient references in Babylonian law to the development of life-saving vaccines, global eradication efforts, and the challenges that persist today. The conversation blends historical anecdotes, scientific breakthroughs, ethical debates, and memorable pop culture references. With a focus on the almost invariably fatal nature of rabies post-symptom onset and the crucial role of prevention, the episode offers a thorough, thoughtful narrative about one of the world’s most dreaded zoonotic diseases.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction and Relevance (02:10–03:01)

• Rabies in the News & Listener Mail
  Tracy explains their recent obsession with rabies, triggered by:
  • A fox biting several people near the US Capitol.
  • Concern over whether all bite victims got proper rabies shots.
  • Email from a listener about a mass rabies exposure in Morocco, which Holly and Tracy are planning to visit (a high-risk rabies area).
  • “Rabies is virtually always fatal once people develop symptoms… today’s rabies prophylaxis is almost 100% effective at preventing that from happening.” – Tracy (03:01)

Rabies: Origins and Ancient References (05:15–10:12)

• Virology & Etymology
  • Rabies is caused by rabies lyssavirus, likely originating in old world bats.
  • The term “rabies” stems from Latin (“to rage”); “lyssavirus” from Greek (“frenzy”/”madness”).
  • Main human connection has always been through dogs.
• Ancient Laws and Texts
  • First written record: The Ashnunna code (ca. 2000 BCE, present-day Iraq) outlined fines for owners of mad dogs causing deaths.
    • “If a dog is mad… if it bites a man and causes his death, then the owner shall pay 2/3 of a mina of silver.” – Tracy reading (05:43)
  • In 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote:
    “Rabies drives the animal mad… the disease is fatal to the dog itself and to any animal it may bite, man excepted.” – Tracy (06:57)
    • Holly clarifies this mistranslation; people have long known rabies is virtually always fatal to humans. (07:25–07:56)

The Disease & Its Cultural Image (07:56–12:05)

• Symptoms and Cultural Fear
  • Rabies takes two forms: paralytic (lethargy, paralysis) and furious (agitation, aggression).
  • Hydrophobia (fear/inability to swallow water) was recognized as a hallmark; referenced as early as Celsus (2nd cent. CE).
• Rabies in Literature & Metaphor
  • Homer refers to Hector in The Iliad as a “rabid dog”.
  • Roman philosopher Celsus described the connection between rabies and saliva, and ancient treatments like wound washing and cauterization.

Rabies Spreads Worldwide (10:12–13:38)

• Geographic Spread
  • By 1500 years ago, rabies had reached much of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
  • Medieval and early modern Europe saw periodic outbreaks in wolves, foxes, and dogs.
  • In the Americas, pre-Columbian rabies mainly infected bats and skunks. Europeans brought dog rabies to the continent—first major outbreak: Mexico City, 1709.
  • “Rabid dogs rarely existed in the Americas prior to colonization…” – Tracy (11:13)

Early Prevention and Cure Attempts (17:55–21:44)

• Preventative Measures
  • People used folk remedies, St. Hubert’s key (heated iron for cauterization), and washing wounds—not always effective but sometimes helped reduce infection.
  • Early laws (like the UK’s Metropolitan Streets Act, 1867) allowed muzzling of stray/dangerous dogs, which reduced rabies cases.
  • Thorough wound washing is still the first step today.
  • “Thoroughly washing the wound is still step one in rabies prevention today. But none of this was enough…” – Holly (20:11)

Scientific Understanding & the Search for a Vaccine (21:44–29:41)

• Scientific Milestones
  • 1769: Giovanni Morgagni observed rabies traveled via nerves, not blood.
  • 1804: Georg Zinke proved rabies transmission through saliva.
  • 1879–1881: Victor Gaultier and others experiment on animals; discover attenuation (drying weakens the virus).
• Louis Pasteur’s Breakthrough
  • Pasteur and his team developed an attenuated rabies vaccine by air-drying infected rabbit spinal cords.
  • July 1885: First widely publicized successful human treatment—9-year-old Joseph Meister, who survived after a series of inoculations.
    • “Pasteur didn’t publish his first two human attempts.” – Tracy (27:45)

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[Memorable Segment]

“Joseph Meister was given a series of inoculations… starting with a very weak preparation and working up… Three months later he had no sign of rabies.”
– Tracy (28:53)

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• Ethical Debates and Public Reaction
  • As word spread, rabies vaccine treatment became sensational news—especially after American children were sent to Paris for it.
  • Some criticized the experiments for animal use (anti-vivisectionists) or for treating patients who may not have needed it.
  • By 1898, over 20,000 people had been treated at the Institut Pasteur, with a fatality rate of less than 0.5%.
    • “This was still a dramatic improvement over an untreatable fatal disease.” – Tracy (37:39)

Advances in Testing and Vaccine Safety (37:24–39:32)

• Negri Bodies and Improved Vaccines
  • 1903: Aldecchi Negri identifies “Negri bodies” in the brain, aiding diagnosis (38:09).
  • Vaccine improved to use tissue cultures instead of infected brain matter for safety.

Rabies Eradication Efforts & Modern Status (38:50–44:17)

• Mass Vaccination and Global Discrepancies
  • Discussion of modern campaigns to vaccinate dogs and wild animals—some countries/regions now rabies-free (e.g., UK, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand).
  • Even in “rabies-free” zones, bat lyssaviruses remain—so bat bites always warrant medical attention.
    • “Just don’t touch bats with your bare hands… but they’re so cute!” – Tracy (39:32)

Contemporary Pop Culture and Misconceptions (44:17–46:01)

• Treatment Myths & Current Protocols
  • Addressing myth of rabies shots as “horrifyingly painful stomach injections”—no longer accurate.
  • Now: one dose of immune globulin + 4 vaccine shots in the arm, much safer and easier.
• Non-Bite Transmission
  • Rare cases occur via organ transplant or mucous membranes.

Rare Survival & The Milwaukee Protocol (46:01–47:35)

• A Near Miracle – and Its Limits
  • 2004: Gina Giese survives rabies with “Milwaukee Protocol” (induced coma + antivirals)—first ever documented.
  • Protocol has a very low success rate (11 survivors out of 38 tries); requires extensive, expensive hospital care, not realistic for most regions affected by rabies.

Final Thoughts and Global Rabies Context (47:35–50:58)

• Global Cost and Prevention
  • Rabies costs ~$8.6 billion/year globally, and over 15 million receive post-exposure prophylaxis annually (PEP); U.S. cost per PEP: $1,200–6,500.
• World Rabies Day & The Importance of Dog Vaccination
  • September 28: World Rabies Day (and Pasteur’s death anniversary).
  • Hope for the future: more widespread vaccination of dogs, the main reservoir for human cases worldwide.
  • “A lot of people who die of rabies are just a kid who wanted to pet a dog.” – Tracy (50:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Rabies is virtually always fatal once people develop symptoms… but today’s rabies prophylaxis is almost 100% effective.” – Tracy (03:01)

• “If a dog is mad… if it bites a man and causes his death, then the owner shall pay 2/3 of a mina of silver.” – Tracy reading Ashnunna code (05:43)

• “Thoroughly washing the wound is still step one in rabies prevention today. But none of this was enough…”
  – Holly (20:11)

• “This was still a dramatic improvement over an untreatable fatal disease.”
  – Tracy, on the Pasteur vaccine (37:39)

• “Just in general, don’t touch bats with your bare hands… but they’re so cute!”
  – Tracy & Holly (39:32)

• “A lot of the people who die of rabies are like just a kid who wanted to pet a dog.”
  – Tracy (50:58)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Story setup / Modern relevance: 02:10–03:01
• Ancient historical references: 05:15–10:12
• Disease symptoms, hydrophobia, and literature: 07:56–10:12
• Arrival and spread in the Americas: 11:13–12:51
• Middle Ages to 19th C.: 17:55–21:44
• Scientific discoveries – nerves and saliva: 21:44–24:12
• Pasteur’s vaccine development: 24:38–29:41
• American children sent to Paris – media sensation: 33:57–35:01
• Ethical debates / Institut Pasteur founded: 35:42–37:24
• Negri bodies; vaccine safety advances: 37:24–39:32
• Mass vaccination & eradication campaigns: 38:50–41:02
• Modern PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis): 43:09–44:17
• Survivor Gina Giese & Milwaukee Protocol: 46:01–47:35
• Economic cost & closing thoughts on vaccination: 49:10–50:58

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Tone Notes

• Conversational and accessible, balancing scientific accuracy with storytelling.
• Moments of humor: “Don’t touch bats with your bare hands… but they’re so cute!” (39:32)
• Empathetic emphasis on the tragedies rabies still causes—especially among children.
• Occasional off-the-cuff admissions (“I would not want to get 14 to 21 shots…” – Tracy, 43:09) and personal experiences with veterinary care reinforce the human side of the history.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a comprehensive, engaging, and sometimes sobering look at the persistent menace of rabies. From ancient laws to scientific advances, and from local outbreaks to present-day global campaigns, Holly and Tracy demonstrate that rabies has shaped—and continues to challenge—public health in profound ways. Their exploration makes clear that while rabies deaths are far less common in many countries today, the fight for universal prevention and access to vaccines is far from over.

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Transcript

[Tracy V. Wil]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Holly Fry]

Listen to your elders, honey.

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[Danielle Fishel]

So what happened to Chappaquiddick?

[Tracy V. Wil]

Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[Bob Crawford]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Left a woman behind to drown.

[Bob Crawford]

Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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Hey guys, it's Janae AKA Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast and I'm bringing you an all new mini podcast series called Sincerely, Janae. Sure, I'm a singer, author, businesswoman and podcaster, but at the end of the day I am human and that's why I'm sharing my ups and downs with you in real time and on the go. Listen to Jiggies and chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

Happy Saturday. Our episode on the Dickin Metal had a brief mention of efforts to keep the UK free of rabies and we also just got an email from listener.

[Old Gays Podcast Promoter]

Whitney on the subject of a mass.

[Holly Fry]

Rabies exposure in the news. And we have been working on plans.

[Old Gays Podcast Promoter]

For our trip to Morocco in November.

[Holly Fry]

Which is a country considered to be a high risk for dog rabies. Basically, we're just thinking a lot about.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Rabies right now, so seemed like a good time to replay our May 9, 2022 episode on the History of rabies.

[Old Gays Podcast Promoter]

Enjoy.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wil.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Foxes are one of many wild animals that share cities and other places with human beings. And in April, one of them made headlines after biting at least nine people around the US Capitol. When this story crossed my Twitter feed, I became incredibly invested in whether everybody who got bitten by this fox had gotten their rabies shots. Afterward, news articles were not telling me the answer to this information. Some of them were talking about a specific reporter or a specific congressperson, but I was like, no, everybody, everybody needs to get the rabies shots, because foxes can carry rabies. Rabies is virtually always fatal once people develop symptoms or once anyone develops symptoms. But today's rabies Prophylaxis is almost 100% effective at preventing that from happening. It is, I think, the most effective vaccine that we have in existence. So then when news broke that, yes, this fox did have rabies was like, just a big flashing, screaming sign in my brain going, rabies shots, rabies shots, rabies shots. Please tell me everyone got their rabies shots. Of course, then that made me want to do a podcast on rabies and the vaccine that prevents it. Something that somehow I thought we already had stuff on we don't. Or if we do, I failed to find it. The vast majority of our listeners live in places where rabies deaths in humans are extremely rare. Some parts of the world are rabies free, and here in the United States, there were only five human deaths from rabies in 2021. That was the highest number of annual rabies deaths in the United States in a decade. There are also places, though, where rabies is still endemic and globally, about 56,000 people die from it every year. That is a. Not a like. That's a small number compared to something like the current pandemic. But there are 56,000 totally preventable deaths. Like, we have, right what we need to prevent this. So I wanted to talk about that. Heads up, though. There's a lot of animal experimentation in this episode and deaths.

[Holly Fry]

Obviously, rabies is caused by rabies lyssavirus, which probably originated in old world bats. This virus has existed on every continent except Antarctica and Australia for millennia. And although Australia is rabies free, it's home to a closely related virus called bat lyssavirus. But in spite of the virus connection to bats, humanity's connection to rabies has mainly been through dogs.

[Tracy V. Wil]

That connection shows up in the first written reference we have of rabies, that's in the Ashnunna code from roughly 2000 BCE. Ishnunna was a city in what's now Iraq, and some of its laws have survived on a pair of broken tablets that were found at an archaeological site near Baghdad. Here's one of the laws quote, if a dog is mad, and the authorities have brought the fact to the knowledge of its owner, if he does not keep it in and it bites a man and causes his death, then the owner shall pay 2/3 of a mina of silver. If it bites a slave and causes his death, he shall pay 15 shekels of silver.

[Holly Fry]

The first written reference to rabies in China is from the Zuo tradition, sometimes called the Zuo Commentary. This is a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, which chronicles a period of Chinese history stretching from 722 to 481 BC. One passage in the Tsuo tradition describes people of the capital city of Sung chasing a rabid dog. The dog ran into the home of a minister named Hua Chen, and the people chased after it. Hua Chen was afraid and fled the city.

[Tracy V. Wil]

In about the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote this in his History of Animals. Dogs suffer from three diseases, rabies, Quincy, and sore feet. Rabies drives the animal mad, and any animal whatever excepting man, will take the disease. If bitten by a dog so afflicted, the disease is fatal to the dog itself and to any animal it may bite, man excepted.

[Holly Fry]

So this translation makes it sound like Aristotle was saying that humans don't get rabies. But it's also been interpreted as meaning that people don't always develop rabies when bitten by a rabid dog, and that is true. Or that people don't always die from the disease if they contract it, which is almost never true. People have known that rabies was essentially always fatal for thousands of years, though Roman court physician Scribonius Large described rabies as incurable in the first century ce.

[Tracy V. Wil]

In addition to being lethal, rabies progresses in a way that can be really terrifying. The exact symptoms can vary, but there are two broad categories, both of which end in coma and death. Paralytic rabies involves lethargy, weakness and paralysis. And furious rabies involves agitation, aggression and hyperactivity. The word rabies reflects this latter type that comes from the Latin for to rage, which may have roots in a Sanskrit word meaning to do violence. Lyssavirus has a similar root. It comes from a Greek word meaning frenzy or madness, which was used to describe rabies as well as to describe irrational rage.

[Holly Fry]

Rabies shows up a lot in popular culture, and that goes back thousands of years as well, including the use of rabies or rabid dogs as a metaphor for being mad or uncontrollable. For example, in the Iliad, which was written in about the 8th century BCE, Homer describes Hector as a rabid dog.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Rabies can also cause paralysis and spasms in the throat that make it impossible to swallow water. Water. That's why it's also known as hydrophobia. In the 2nd century CE, Roman philosopher Celsus used the word hydrophobia in his description of the disease. Celsus also recognized that something was present in saliva that transmitted this illness, and he recommended a range of techniques to draw this substance out of wounds, like.

[Holly Fry]

The connection between rabies and aggressive rage. The connection between rabies and hydrophobia made its way into literature centuries ago. For example, in about the year 500, Caelius Aurelianus suggested that Homer's description of Tantalus in the Odyssey might have been inspired by rabies, since Tantalus is tormented by water that he cannot drink. It's also possible that rabies influenced ancient Greek depictions of Cerberus, the multi headed dog that guarded the underworld, and that those depictions of a mad beast with poison frothing from its jaws circled back to influence people's perceptions of rabies.

[Tracy V. Wil]

So through these and other written references, we know that rabies had spread from wherever it originated, all through India, China, the Middle East, Greece, Rome and Egypt by about 1500 years ago. But we don't really know how widespread the disease was in any of these places, or how many deaths it caused among humans and other animals. That starts to change in the medieval period, when people started documenting large outbreaks of the disease within specific animals.

[Holly Fry]

These accounts primarily focused on outbreaks among dogs and other canids, including wolves and foxes. For example, an outbreak of wolf rabies struck Franconia in 1271. A massive outbreak among red foxes spread over parts of Europe between 1571 and 1581, leading people to try to stop the disease by culling them. Sometimes these outbreaks could spread to other animals, including infecting people when they were bitten.

[Tracy V. Wil]

At this point, we haven't mentioned rabies in the Americas. And that's because while rabies existed in the Americas through all this, rabid dogs probably did not, based on genetic studies of the virus itself. Before European colonization, rabies in the Americas primarily infected bats and skunks. There's some evidence that indigenous peoples in ancient Central and South America regarded both bat bites and snake bites as potentially dangerous and treated bat bites with washing and cauterization with hot coals to try to prevent disease. Spanish colonists were reported being bitten by bats in the early 1500s, and in 1514, Fernandez de Oviedo wrote about several soldiers dying after being bitten by vampire bats.

[Holly Fry]

Dog rabies is one of many diseases that Europeans introduced to the Americas, and after that introduction it spread to other animals and became far more likely to infect people. But that process did not happen nearly as quickly with rabies as it did with diseases like smallpox. Rabies typically has an incubation period of roughly three to eight weeks, although it can occasionally be much longer once symptoms appear. Rabies is virtually always fatal within about 10 days. When Europeans first started sailing to the Americas, the voyage often took more than two months, so any dogs or other animals that had been infected before setting sail usually developed symptoms and died or were killed while still at sea.

[Tracy V. Wil]

So that meant introducing dog rabies to the Americas required a voyage that was short enough for infected dogs to survive. It also required a large enough population of dogs and other mammals within a colony and for the disease to keep circulating once it had been introduced. The first recorded outbreak of dog rabies in the Americas was reported in Mexico City in 1709, and by the end of the 18th century, dog rabies was widespread in most of the places in the Americas that Europeans had colonized. This in turn spread the disease to the continent's native animals, with some of those exposures leading to new strains of the virus that were adapted to specific species species we'll talk about how a.

[Holly Fry]

Vaccine was developed to prevent rabies after a sponsor break.

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[Holly Fry]

Listen to your elders, honey.

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[Holly Fry]

Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever.

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[Danielle Fishel]

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[Pod Meets World Host]

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Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of your life.

[Dr. Leah Tritate]

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[Tracy V. Wil]

By the 18th and 19th centuries, outbreaks of rabies were spread across a lot of the world in domesticated dogs and in wild animals. In North America, rabies became so widespread in skunks that they were nicknamed phobicats, like hydrophobia and phobia. Tents were advertised as a way for cowboys to avoid being bitten by them in their sleep. In 1803, an outbreak among wild foxes in France spread to dogs, pigs, and people. Bites from rabid wolves tended to be particularly lethal, in part because attacking wolves often bit people's faces or necks, meaning the virus was way closer to their brain, while rabid dogs usually bit people's hands or arms.

[Holly Fry]

There was no cure for rabies and no way to tell whether a person would develop it after being bitten. And estimates of how many people developed rabies after a bite stretch all the way from 5% to 50%. Some of this is just because of imprecise record keeping, but it's also connected to how people responded to the disease. In many places, there was a widespread assumption that any animal that bit had rabies. And during outbreaks, people tended to hunt down and kill animals that they thought might be spreading disease. So a dog that bit someone in the midst of all of this might be rabid, or it might just be scared and cornered and trying to defend itself.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Around the world, people tried various herbs and medical preparations to prevent or cure rabies. And because it was so lethal, many of these also relied on the idea of divine intervention. For example, Hubertus, also called Saint Hubert, is the patron saint of hunting, and one of his reported miracles involved curing somebody who had been bitten by a rabid dog. So in much of Europe, people used a piece of iron called St. Hubert's key to cauterize bite wounds. As part of this treatment, a priest would also make a shallow cut over a person's forehead, place a black bandage over that, and the person wore that bandage for nine days. Some People even carried one of these keys around with them for protection.

[Holly Fry]

Long before the development of the germ theory of disease, people recognized that when someone was bitten by a rabid animal, something in the animal's saliva was going into the wound and potentially causing rabies. So some of the other treatments for bites involved washing the wound, applying caustic chemicals to it, or cauterizing it, whether it was with a Saint Hubertus key or with some other implement. If these treatments were done immediately after a person was bitten, they may have helped reduce the chance of developing rabies by washing away the animal's infected saliva. Thoroughly washing the wound is still step one in rabies prevention today. But none of this was enough to totally prevent the chance of developing the fatal disease.

[Tracy V. Wil]

People also tried to prevent rabies by reducing the numbers of animals that could carry it and transmit it to humans and to other animals. For example, in 1867, the UK passed the Metropolitan Streets Act. Among other things, this act empowered police to collect and muzzle stray dogs or dogs that were determined to be dangerous. This reportedly led to a drop in human cases of rabies in British cities.

[Holly Fry]

Also, in the 18th and 19th centuries, researchers were learning about rabies and working on ways to prevent its spread. During the earlier part of this time, researchers didn't yet know what a virus was, but trying to talk around that got really clunky. So we are still going to call it a virus in our discussion today?

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, it was a lot of incredibly stilted sentences before I was like, we're just calling it a virus, regardless of whether that individual researcher knew what a virus was. So in 1769, Italian anatomist and pathologist John Morgani observed that rabies traveled via the nerves rather than traveling through the bloodstream. He made this connection because some patients reported a feeling of pins and needles or other neurological disturbances around site of their original bite wound. Morgani was correct. Once it enters the body, the rabies virus moves along the nerves until it gets to the brain and the rest of the central nervous system.

[Holly Fry]

After it gets to the brain, the rabies virus makes its way to the salivary glands, where it can cause excessive salivation. And although 18th century researchers didn't quite have that part figured out, they did know that the disease was spread through saliva. In 1793, Scottish surgeon John Hunter speculated that it would be possible to use a lancet to intentionally introduce an infected animal's saliva into another animal. But it's not clear whether he tried this in practice.

[Tracy V. Wil]

We also don't know whether German naturalist Georg Gottfried Zinke was familiar with hunter's work, but in 1804, he brushed saliva from a rabid dog onto a cut he had made in the leg of a healthy dog. This previously healthy dog contracted rabies. He did this same thing with other healthy mammals, demonstrating that it was possible for the bite of an infected dog to infect animals of other species. In 1821, French neurophysiologist Francois Magendie reported that he had infected a previously healthy dog with saliva from a person who had contracted rabies.

[Holly Fry]

Victor Gautier was a professor at the National Veterinary School in Lyon, France, and he started experimenting with rabies in 1879. He found that it was possible to transmit rabies from a dog to a rabbit and then from that rabbit to another rabbit. Rabbits were smaller and easier to keep than dogs, and they were less dangerous research subjects than rabid dogs were. Gaultier also found that the rabbits had a shorter incubation period of about 18 days, rather than a month or more that you might see in a dog.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Gaultier did various experiments with infected animals saliva, attempting to see whether he could find some way of using this infectious material to Prevent rabies. In 1881, he injected rabies virus into the jugular veins of sheep, and they didn't develop rabies. And then when he exposed one of them to saliva from a rabid dog, later on, it seemed like it was immune to the disease.

[Holly Fry]

French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur started working on rabies at about this same time, and he was inspired by Gaultier's success. Pasteur already had an extensive background in this kind of work. In the 1850s, he had studied yeast and alcohol fermentation, as well as the ability for microorganisms to contaminate fermenting beverages. This had contributed to both the germ theory of disease and the development of pasteurization. In the 1860s, he had identified a microorganism that was devastating the French silk industry. And in the 1870s, he studied animal diseases like anthrax and chicken cholera, including developing an anthrax vaccine.

[Tracy V. Wil]

While Pasteur had lots of experience in this kind of research, he had pretty much no experience in medicine or the clinical treatment of patients. So he relied on other people for this knowledge, including French physician and bacteriologist Emile Roux. A whole team of other scientists and doctors were involved in this work as well, including Charles Chamberlain, Emile Duclos, Louis Thouier, and Joseph Grandchet. This was definitely not a solo effort, and Pasteur was not always excited about crediting other people for their involvement in it. There are even some historians who have accused him of stealing other people's ideas.

[Holly Fry]

Much of Pasteur's previous work had involved culturing bacteria and working from those cultures. And he started out trying to do the same thing with rabies. Since rabies is caused by a virus rather than a bacterium, Pasteur's efforts to replicate his earlier process failed. He started working directly with the saliva of infected animals and then moved on to working with central nervous system matters.

[Tracy V. Wil]

He found that if he exposed a healthy rabbit to rabies, it developed rabies. Then, if he used that rabbit's central nervous system matter to expose another rabbit, that second rabbit also developed rabies. And the second rabbit's infection seemed to be more virulent than the first. If he did this a third time, the third rabbit's infection was also more virulent than the seconds had been. He continued this serial passage of the virus from rabbit to rabbit until he had a strain of it that he described as fixed. It was consistent in how virulent it was, and it had an incubation period that was set at six or seven days.

[Holly Fry]

From there, Pasteur air dried the spinal cords of rabbits that had died of that highly virulent fixed strain. The longer they dried, the weaker the virus became. That's a process called attenuation. When he exposed other animals to a small amount of this attenuated virus, they seemed to develop a resistance to rabies rather than becoming ill. From there, Pasteur started to wonder whether it was possible to make an animal more resistant to rabies after it had already been bitten, preventing it from developing the disease.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Having successfully tested out this idea in dogs, he tried it on two people, but he didn't publish on either of these attempts, so. So they were not known about until much later. One of these was a man who had been bitten by a dog. And while this man survived, it's also likely that he had not actually been exposed to rabies. The other was an 11 year old girl who had been bitten in the face by a puppy and she had already started developing rabies symptoms. She died the day after she was given the treatment.

[Holly Fry]

On July 4, 1885, nine year old Joseph Meister was repeatedly bitten by a dog in Alsace. The dog was believed to be rabid, and two days later the child was brought to Pesteur for help. Emile Rue had been heavily involved in Pasteur's research up to this point, and he refused to be involved in the boy's treatment because of ethical concerns. Pasteur expressed some reluctance as well, but Joseph Granchet and Alfred Vaupien of the Academie de Medicines encouraged him to try, with Granchet administering the treatment. Since Pasteur was not a doctor, Joseph.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Was given a series of inoculations over the span of 10 days, starting with a very weak preparation and working up through ones that were less and less attenuated. Three months later he had no sign of rabies. Another attempt was started with another patient. Shortly after Joseph Meister was declared to be in the clear. That was Jean Baptiste Jupil, a 14 year old shepherd who had been mauled while saving a group of younger boys from a dog. Pasteur reported his results to the French Academy of Science on October 26, 1885, while Jupil's treatment was still ongoing. Told about his success with Joseph Meister and the fact that he had successfully inoculated 50 dogs against rabies before trying this process on a human.

[Holly Fry]

We're going to talk more about what happened with all of this after we pause for a quick sponsor break.

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[Holly Fry]

Listen to your elders honey.

[Old Gays Podcast Promoter]

You might know them from their viral videos. But now the old gays pull back the curtain on their brand new podcast Silver Linings with the Old Gays brought to you in partnership with iHeart's Ruby Studio and Veeve Healthcare with over 300 years of experience between them, hosts Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse serve four lifet of wisdom when it comes to love, sex, community and whatever else they've got on the gay agenda. Listen in to these fabulous friends swap stories exploring how queer life has evolved over the decades and the silver linings they've collected along the way. Each episode dives into hot topics from safe sex and online dating to untangling Gen Z lingo, as well as insights on how music, art and fashion show up in queer culture. So check out Silver Linings, a show about how pride ages like fine wine.

[Holly Fry]

Available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever.

[Old Gays Podcast Promoter]

You get your podcasts.

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Hello, it's Danielle Fishel Ryder Strong and.

[Danielle Fishel]

Will Friedle from Pod Meets World and we're bringing you Viva Las Content.

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That's right, we are back in Las Vegas, the city of sin and giving the people what they want. A full week of Y2K content.

[Danielle Fishel]

Wait, we're back in Vegas? Tell me why.

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Well, for the Backstreet Boys residency, it's Sphere, of course.

[Danielle Fishel]

We sat down with Kevin Richardson and AJ McLean just minutes before they took the stage. And our very own Will Friedle basically became the newest member of the band. Boy band, please.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Plus, the man who has the longest running comedy show on the strip joins us and gets his props. It's Carrot Top, baby.

[Danielle Fishel]

And finally, we all l o v her. Ashlee Simpson Ross joins us to talk about her upcoming sold out Vegas residency.

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[Bob Crawford]

American history is full of wise people.

[Danielle Fishel]

Walt Whitman said something like 99.99% of.

[Holly Fry]

War is diarrhea and 1% is glory.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down.

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I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this.

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Proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said. It would have been harder to fake it than to do it.

[Bob Crawford]

Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wil]

As word of Pastor is successful, success at preventing rabies started to spread. People started flocking to him for treatment. By the start of 1886, he had treated at least 350 people. They came from all over Europe and from the United States. In early December of 1885, a dog bit at least seven other dogs and six children in Newark, New Jersey. Word of Pasture's work had made it to the US and a local doctor published an appeal for funds to send the boys to Paris for treatment. Four of the boys were sent to Paris by steamer. The other two were determined to not have sufficient injuries to need treatment. American news coverage of these boys trip to Paris and then their return to the United States turned rabies vaccine into just a media sensation. And three of the boys were displayed at the Globe Museum in the Bowery in New York. After they all got home, not everyone.

[Holly Fry]

Agreed with what Pester and his team were doing. Anti vivisectionists objected to the use of animals in this research. And as we've said, not everyone who is bitten by a rabid animal contracts rabies. And not every animal who bites someone is rabid. Since there was still not a test for rabies, determining whether an animal had it usually involved just waiting to see if it died. But that wasn't really possible if it had already been killed or if it just couldn't be found. You could also expose a healthy animal to the brain or saliva of an animal who had bitten someone. But by the time the healthy animal showed any symptoms, it was just likely to be too late for the human patient.

[Tracy V. Wil]

So critics made the point that Pasteur was potentially exposing people to rabies for no reason and that his inoculation might cause somebody who had been bitten by a non rabid dog to then develop rabies because of their treatment. Critics also noted that some of Pasteur's patients did die. By November of 1886, 1700 patients had received rabies injections and 10 of them had died. The uncertainty, combined with the deaths to spark a huge amount of debate within the medical community about whether what Pasteur was doing was ethical or even medically necessary.

[Holly Fry]

The Academy de Medicine held a meeting on the subject on January 11, 1887. Although Pasteur's critics were vocal, his supporters, led by Dr. Joseph Grandchet, successfully defended his work.

[Tracy V. Wil]

The Institut Pasteur was established on June 4, 1887, and it opened on November 14 of that year. It focused on disease research and on providing rabies vaccine. By 1898, more than 20,000 people had been treated at the Pasteur Institute after a possible rabies exposure, and only 96 of them had died, or less than half of a percent of patients. To be clear, there was a lot about this early version of the vaccine that was inherently unsafe. It was basically made from animal brain or spinal cord tissue. There could for sure be complications. But this was still a dramatic improvement over an untreatable fatal disease.

[Holly Fry]

Discoveries about the rabies virus continued after this point. In 1903, Italian pathologist Aldecchi Negri discovered round and oval regions in the brains of animals that had died of rabies, which he called Negri bodies. At the time, he thought they were some kind of parasite, but they actually arise as part of the reproductive cycle of the virus. This paved the way for the first rabies tests. While there are newer methods for detecting rabies in brain matter today, Negri bodies are still sometimes used when those methods are not available. The most reliable tests do still involve examining an animal's brain, which is why living animals have to be euthanized to be tested for rabies.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Refinements in the vaccine were also in the works. Pasteur's methods didn't always produce a consistently potent vaccine, and if it was too potent, it could cause somebody to contract rabies. In the early 20th century, researchers started using phen to kill the virus rather than attenuating it through air drying. Viruses were cultured in tissues in 1936, which led to tissue cultured vaccines rather than using brain matter to make them. Today's rabies vaccines are mostly cultured in human cells or in chick embryos or some other cellular matter.

[Holly Fry]

Although some of Pasteur's colleagues speculated about whether it would be possible to mass vaccinate dogs or other animals and lower the spread of rabies to P people, serious efforts to do that didn't start until decades later. But efforts like that have led to the successful eradication of rabies in some parts of the world. There are too many rabies free countries today for us to try to name them all, but they include many islands, including many Caribbean islands, the Canary Islands, the Falkland Islands, the Galapagos Islands, the uk, Iceland, Japan and New Zealand. Several nations in continental Europe are also considered rabies free, including much of Western Europe.

[Tracy V. Wil]

We should note though, that rabies free often means rabies free in terrestrial animals. There can still be rabies or other lyssaviruses in bats specifically. So even if you are somewhere that is considered rabies free, being bitten by a bat still warrants medical attention. Just in general, don't touch bats with your bare hands. You don't need to be afraid of bats. They're generally pretty shy and they're not gonna mess with you if you don't mess with them. But like, don't go grab one with your hand, which is so hard because they're so cute. Not for Me, because I see one, like, if I see a bat somewhere that I don't expect to see a bat, I'm like, that bat is definitely a problem. I am not going anywhere near it.

[Holly Fry]

I will tell a bat story in our behind the scenes.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Okay.

[Holly Fry]

As we said at the top of the show, rabies is still endemic in some parts of the world, including parts of Asia and Africa. About 40% of human rabies deaths occur each year in India, with the vast majority of those exposures coming from dogs. And some serious outbreaks among wild animals started long after the rabies vaccine was developed. For example, rabies was identified in North American raccoons in 1936, and there is an ongoing epidemic of rabies among raccoons all along the East Coast. There are efforts to get these and other outbreaks in wild animals under control using things like oral rabies vaccine baits.

[Tracy V. Wil]

There are also mass vaccination campaigns. A lot of work on this. A lot of the deaths that occur around the world happen in children who, like, just wanted to pet a dog and got bitten. So it is very sad. It's also possible for one animal to spark a huge exposure scenario, even in places where rabies is relatively well controlled. For example, on October 5, 1994, a family bought a kitten from a pet store in New Hampshire. And then about three weeks later, this kitten developed seizures and died. After its death, it was determined to have had rabies. This kitten had been examined by a veterinarian and had a certificate of health before it was sold. But the pet store didn't have clear records of when animals had arrived there or been sold. So in the end, 665 people received post exposure prophylaxis or PEP for rabies. These were people who had come into contact with that kitten or who had bought other animals that had probably had contact with the kitten at the store or people who had contact with those animals, people who worked at the store, people who visited the store and handled the animals, really, just on and on. The probable initial source for this whole thing was a raccoon that may have come into contact with three feral kittens that were then captured and sold at the store.

[Holly Fry]

As a side note, you may have heard that rabies prophylaxis is a horrifying series of incredibly painful shots directly into the stomach with a gigantic and terrifying needle. It is not. Older versions of rabies Pep did involve a long series of 14 to 21 shots, usually given in the abdomen. But that's just because the abdomen offered a lot more surface area to Work with, not because the injections went into the stomach through a huge needle. Still, I mean, to be clear, that is a lot of shots into a tender area. And the vaccine that was in use at the time could have a range of unpleasant side effects.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, I would not want to get 14 to 21 shots all around my abdominal tissue. No, thank you. It was not a gigantically long needle going into people's actual stomachs. It's also not what is in use today. The current recommendation is that a person gets one dose of human rabies immune globulin and one dose of rabies vaccine shortly after the bite. The immune globulin is typically injected near the bite location and then the vaccine typically goes into the deltoid region of the arm where lots of other vaccines go. Then the person gets three more doses of vaccine that are spread out in the days that follow again as injections into the shoulder area. Also using a vaccine that is like, cultured in tissues and a lot safer than what was being used in the past. This process can be a little bit different for children or if a person is immunocompromised, or if a person has been previously vaccinated for rabies. That's something that's typically only done based on a person's risk for being exposed to rabies.

[Holly Fry]

As another side note, we have been really, really focused on bites here because the overwhelming majority of rabies exposures come from bites or possibly scratches. There are some other ways to contract the disease, but they're extraordinarily rare, like through the eyes or mucous membranes. If someone is exposed to aerosolized rabies virus in some way, or because rabies can closely resemble various types of encephalitis, it is sometimes missed as a diagnosis when doctors don't know that the person was bitten by an animal. This has led to an extremely small number of rabies transmissions through organ transplant, although the risk of this is extremely remote. After their first report of it happening, many organ procurement organizations started including screening questions to try to rule out this possibility. Circling back around to rabies and pop culture. This was actually a plot line on the TV show Scrubs.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, it sounds truly horrifying, but also like the disease process that rabies causes, like in the umbrella of encephalitis. And if a doctor doesn't know that a person was bitten by an animal or picked up a bat or like it's. Most doctors have never seen a case of rabies in their career, and it's not the thing that first comes to mind. In 2004, 15 year old Gina Geezy and her medical team made headlines after she became the first person known to survive rabies. After starting to develop symptoms, she had picked up and been bitten by a bat, and although her wound was cleaned with hydrogen peroxide, she wasn't taken in for further treatment. She started developing symptoms about a month later and then about six days into her illness, reported having been bitten by the bat.

[Holly Fry]

Doctors placed Gizi in a medically induced coma and gave her antiviral drugs and other treatments. These treatments continued until tests suggested that her body was fighting off the virus and at that point she was brought out of the coma. She survived this experience and news outlets have continued to report on her life life into the year 2021.

[Tracy V. Wil]

At the time, this seemed like a hopeful sign that what came to be known as the Milwaukee Protocol would make it possible to cure people after they started showing symptoms of rabies. But efforts to replicate that success have been largely unsuccessful. One paper in the Journal of the Brazilian Society of tropical medicine traced 38 published uses of the Milwaukee Protocol, including one use of a similar protocol called the recife protocol. Only 11 of those patients survived, with all but five of them having moderate to severe complications afterward.

[Holly Fry]

This is certainly an improvement over a disease with an essentially 100% fatality rate, but these numbers may be deceptively optimistic. Three of the people who were described as having survived did make it through the most critical part of the illness, but they still died. At least one of the patients may not have actually had rabies, and there's been no coordinated method for tracking when this protocol has or hasn't been attempted. It's likely that anyone who tried it and succeeded would publish their results, but it's also possible that people who tried it and failed have not.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, there are some papers like opinion Commentary, written by teams of doctors that are like, this does not work and we need to stop. Stop focusing our effort on it. And others that are a little bit more like this may need some other refining before it could work. Aside from all that, though, all the patients described in these publications spent at least a month in the hospital with extensive care throughout their stay. So it's extremely unlikely that this protocol could really be put into use in the places where human deaths from rabies are the most most prevalent. These places tend to be rural and poor, without a lot of healthcare infrastructure. Places where people don't have access to rabies prophylaxis are likely to also be places where people don't have access to a hospital that could support this kind of treatment. Also, it's extremely clear at this point that coordinated programs of public education and dog vaccinations, and sometimes vaccinations in particular wild animals, can lower the number of human rabies deaths enormously. And places that don't have the resources to support those kinds of programs and initiatives are really likely not to have the resources to support hundreds or thousands of people with long term hospital stays and medically induced comas. It's like, even if this worked, it would, would really be working for the wealthiest countries in the world and not the places where treatment is most needed.

[Holly Fry]

So all of that said, the global cost of rabies is roughly $8.6 billion per year. And more than 15 million people per year receive rabies PEP. This protocol can be really expensive. In the United States, it can cost between 1200 and $6,500.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, that's like one estimate that I can, that I saw. I saw some that were even higher than that. September 28th of every year is World Rabies Day. That's also the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur. Well, that's a basic history of rabies rabies. My hope is that in the future we'll at least get to the point where the places in the world that, that have lots of free roaming dogs also have those dogs vaccinated. Because that's really where like so much feeding back into the greater environment and so much feeding into human cases of rabies. Like it's all interconnected with the dogs.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I think we mentioned it at the top of our episode on the history of veterinary medicine that one of the vets at my practice participates in a program where she goes to countries where the dog population is not well, vaccinated and tries to just do as many vaccinations as they can in a short period of time.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Yeah, they had gone to Malawi, I think, and Malawi's target is like 70% of the dog population vaccinated, which would do a lot to reduce the number of human deaths. But still would like there would still be a reservoir of circulating rabies among dog populations. There are a lot of sad parts to that, but one of the saddest parts is like a lot of the, a lot of the people who die of rabies are like just a kid that wanted to pet a dog.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Danielle Fishel]

So what happened to Chappaquiddick?

[Tracy V. Wil]

Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[Bob Crawford]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Left a woman behind to drown.

[Bob Crawford]

Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Pod Meets World Host]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Janae (Cheekies)]

Hey guys, it's Janae AKA Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast and I'm bringing you an all new mini podcast series called Sincerely Janae. Sure, I'm a singer, author, businesswoman and podcaster, but at the end of the day, I am human and that's why I'm sharing my ups and downs with you in real time and on the go. Listen to Jiggies and chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Will Lucas]

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[Janae (Cheekies)]

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[Holly Fry]

Yeah, we all know, right?

[Janae (Cheekies)]

Genius is evenly distributed.

[Tracy V. Wil]

Opportunity is not.

[Will Lucas]

To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get.

[Holly Fry]

Your podcasts, this is an iheart PODC.