Rabid - Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy

Rabies is a terrifying but absolutely fascinating disease.  Pretty much the only disease guaranteed to kill you--more people have survived Ebola than rabies--it's been around for as long as civilization has and has also lurked close to humanity because one of one of its main carries, dogs.  In Rabid, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy go not into the science of rabies, though they touch on it, but into the cultural history of rabies, including how it's inspired works of fiction in genres of literature and horror.

The book starts with a quick overview of rabies as it exists in our culture today--a looming threat of twenty shots in the stomach that's not true of all--touches on Louis Pasteur and his team's work to create a vaccine, and then dives into the first chapter, taking us all the way back to ancient times and touching on lyssa, a sort of rabid rage that pops up in The Iliad.  Wasik and Murphy aren't arguing that Paris, who lyssa refers to in the original Greek, is actually rabid, but more that the sort of rage that consumed him was the type that was seen in rabid animals, drawing evidence that rabies existed even back then.  A Sumerian joke adds to the argument.  From there, they work their way forward in time, through dog cullings, the evolution of vampire and werewolf myths and werewolf trials, how it's affected zombies (fast zombies, distinct from slow zombies that are more true to their origins in voodoo), and so on.  While parts of this were fascinating, I found myself wondering if it was quite so necessary to spend so long on the pop culture when there's really a lot more to "culture" in general than werewolfs, vampires, and zombies.  The final chapter, about a recent rabies epidemic in dogs in Bali, was more intriguing to me, because it dug into not only how rabies spread, but how it was maintained in Bali because of the relationship people had with their animals.  In the conclusion, they go into the potential that rabies has to be a tool of use instead of evil.  They also touch on the treatments for rabies, which, if you miss the vaccine, is pretty much only one and has only been "successful" six times, if you count "successful" as "didn't die from rabies, but died of other complications, remained in a vegetative state, or had serious other impairments," with only two people actually recovering.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narration was good, but having it in audio form really hammered home how much time the authors spend recounting various vampire and werewolf encounters, relating the plots of zombie movies, and things like that.  It seemed like, for much of history, they didn't really have a lot of "cultural history" of rabies to pull on, so they used up pages by relating every detail they could dig up for the instances they did have.  Consequently, if you're not interested in vampires, werewolves, or "fast" zombies, it can be a bit of a drag.  Rabies influenced these genres?  Interesting.  An hour of records of every supposed vampire or werewolf encounter?  Not as interesting.  I guess I was looking for something that did have a little more science behind it; we still don't know a ton about rabies, but that's been the case for much of history with supposed "cures" ranging from the ridiculous to the downright dangerous, and I think I was looking for some idea of how culture had lent itself to these, more than just myths and legends.  The actual science parts of this book were so much more interesting than the recitations of myths and extended quotes of records and the science didn't feel like filler, unlike the numerous examples for the "cultural" bits.  I think the culture was interesting, but there was a bit of "beating the dead horse" here, and that was frustrating.

Overall, a decent book, and I liked it, but I was hoping it would have a bit more substance than it actually did.

3 stars out of 5.