WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Rabies 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:05.720 Happy Saturday. Our episode on the Dick and Metal had 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.760 a brief mention of efforts to keep the UK free 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.520 of rabies, and we also just got an email from 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:14.680 listener Whitney on the subject of a mass rabies exposure 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.720 in the news, and we have been working on plans 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.360 for our trip to Morocco in November, which is a 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:24.120 country considered to be a high risk for dog rabies. Basically, 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:26.599 we're just thinking a lot about rabies right now, so 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:29.800 seemed like a good time to replay our May ninth, 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:34.880 twenty twenty two episode on the history of rabies. Enjoy 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:41.000 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:51.120 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.440 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Foxes are one of many 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:59.720 wild animals that share cities and other places with human beings, 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.640 and in April, one of them made headlines after biting 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:08.200 at least nine people around the US capital. When this 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.480 story crossed my Twitter feed, I became incredibly invested in 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.440 whether everybody who got bitten by this fox had gotten 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.560 their raby shots. Afterward, news articles were not telling me 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.440 the answer to this information some of them were talking 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.440 about a specific reporter or a specific congress person, but 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.840 I was like, no, everybody, everybody needs to get the 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:36.240 raby shots because foxes can carry rabies. Rabies is virtually 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:40.600 always fatal once people develop symptoms, once anyone develops symptoms, 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.560 but today's rabies profile axis is almost one hundred percent 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.000 effective at preventing that from happening. It is, I think, 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:50.680 the most effective vaccine that we have in existence. So 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.520 then when news broke that yes, this fox did have rabies, 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.720 it was like just a big flashing, screaming sign in 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:02.520 my brain, like raby shots, raby shots, Please tell me 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.800 everyone got their rabies shots. Of course, then that made 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:07.880 me want to do a podcast on rabies and the 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.720 vaccine that prevents it, something that somehow I thought we 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.760 already had stuff on. We don't, or if we do, 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.359 I failed to find it. The vast majority of our 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:22.880 listeners live in places where rabies deaths and humans are 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:26.760 extremely rare. Some parts of the world are rabies free, 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.680 and here in the United States there were only five 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:34.040 human deaths from rabies and twenty twenty one that was 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.200 the highest number of annual rabies deaths in the United 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.239 States in a decade. There are also places, though, where 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:44.760 rabies is still endemic, and globally about fifty six thousand 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.240 people die from it every year. That is a not 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.320 a like. That's a small number compared to something like 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:56.680 the current pandemic, but they're fifty six thousand totally preventable deaths, 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.360 like we have right what we need to prevent this, 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:02.360 so I want to talk about that adds up though 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:08.400 there's a lot of animal experimentation in this episode and deaths. Obviously, 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.640 Rabi's is caused by Rabi's lyssavirus, which probably originated in 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.959 Old World bats. This virus has existed on every continent 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:22.639 except Antarctica and Australia for millennia, and although Australia is 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.640 Raybi's free, it's home to a closely related virus called 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.720 bat Lissa virus. But in spite of the virus's connection 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:35.240 to bats, humanity's connection to Rabi's has mainly been through dogs. 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.040 That connection shows up in the first written reference we 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:43.480 have of rabies, that's in the Eshnuna code from roughly 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:48.080 two thousand BCE. Eshnuno was a city in what's now Iraq, 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.840 and some of its laws have survived on a pair 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.200 of broken tablets that were found at an archaeological site 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.960 near Baghdad. Here's one of the laws quote if a 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.160 dog is mad, and the authority have brought the fact 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:03.760 to the knowledge of its owner, if he does not 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.200 keep it in, and it bites a man and causes 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.720 his death, then the owner shall pay two thirds of 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.840 a mina of silver. If it bites a slave and 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.320 causes his death, he shall pay fifteen shekels of silver. 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.479 The first written reference to rabies in China is from 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.919 the Zuo tradition, sometimes called the Zoo Commentary. This is 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.320 a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, which chronicles 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.360 a period of Chinese history stretching from seven twenty two 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:35.520 to four eighty one BC. One passage in the Tzuo 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:39.599 tradition describes people of the capital city of Sung chasing 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.919 a rabid dog. The dog ran into the home of 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.360 a minister named Huachen, and the people chased after it. 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.520 Quachen was afraid and fled the city. In about the 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:55.480 fourth century BCE, Aristotle wrote this in his History of Animals. 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:01.479 Quote dogs suffer from three diseases, es, quincy, and sore feet. 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:06.640 Rabies drives the animal mad, and any animal whatever, excepting man, 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.040 will take the disease if bitten by a dog so afflicted, 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.080 the disease is fatal to the dog itself and to 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:18.760 any animal it may bite. Man accepted. So this translation 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.200 makes it sound like Aristotle was saying that humans don't 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.400 get rabies, but it's also been interpreted as meaning that 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.040 people don't always develop rabies when bitten by a rabid dog, 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.320 and that is true, or that people don't always die 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.200 from the disease if they contract it, which is almost 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.880 never true. People have known that rabies was essentially always 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:43.520 fatal for thousands of years, though Roman court physicians Scribonius 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:47.960 largest described rabies as incurable in the first century CE. 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.600 In addition to being lethal, rabies progresses in a way 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.119 that can be really terrifying. The exact symptoms can vary, 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.680 but there are two broad categories, both of which end 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:06.680 in coma and death. Paralytic rabies involves lethargy, weakness, and paralysis, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:12.960 and furious rabies involves agitation, aggression, and hyperactivity. The word 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:17.040 rabies reflects this latter type that comes from the Latin 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.240 for two rage, which may have roots in a Sanskrit 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.920 word meaning to do violence. Lisavirus has a similar root. 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:28.960 It comes from a Greek word meaning frenzy or madness, 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.120 which was used to describe rabies as well as to 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:37.000 describe irrational rage. Rabi shows up a lot in popular culture, 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.280 and that goes back thousands of years as well, including 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.080 the use of rabies or rabid dogs as a metaphor 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:47.560 for being mad or uncontrollable. For example, in the Iliad, 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.080 which was written in about the eighth century BCE, Homer 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.760 describes Hector as a rabid dog. Rabies can also cause 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.800 paralysis and spasms in the throat that make it impossible 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:04.120 to swallow water. That's why it's also known as hydrophobia. 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.599 In the second century CE, Roman philosopher Celsus used the 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:13.360 word hydrophobia in his description of the disease. Celsus also 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:19.120 recognized that something was present in saliva that transmitted this illness, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.200 and he recommended a range of techniques to draw this 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:26.600 substance out of wounds. Like the connection between Rabi's and 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:30.720 aggressive rage, the connection between rabies and hydrophobia made its 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:34.640 way into literature centuries ago. For example, in about the 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:39.240 year five hundred, Kayleius Aurelianus suggested that Homer's description of 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:43.480 Tantalus in the Odyssey might have been inspired by rabies, 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.320 since Tantalus is tormented by water that he cannot drink. 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.480 It's also possible that rabies influenced ancient Greek depictions of Cerberus, 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.680 the multi headed dog that guarded the underworld, and that 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.240 those depictions of a mad beast with poisoned frothing from 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.800 its jaws circled back to influence people's perceptions of rabies. 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.000 So through these and other written references, we know that 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:13.560 rabies had spread from wherever it originated, all through India, China, 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.560 the Middle East, Greece, Rome, and Egypt by about fifteen 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.840 hundred years ago, but we don't really know how wide 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.560 spread the disease was in any of these places, or 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.920 how many deaths it caused among humans and other animals. 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.720 That starts to change in the medieval period, when people 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:35.800 started documenting large outbreaks of the disease within specific animals. 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:40.480 These accounts primarily focused on outbreaks among dogs and other canids, 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:44.760 including wolves and foxes. For example, an outbreak of wolf 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:49.679 raybies struck Franconia in twelve seventy one. A massive outbreak 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.800 among red foxes spread over parts of Europe between fifteen 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.320 seventy one and fifteen eighty one, leading people to try 0:08:56.360 --> 0:09:00.520 to stop the disease by culling them. Sometimes these outbreaks 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.959 could spread to other animals, including infecting people when they 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.800 were bitten. At this point, we haven't mentioned rabies in 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:12.040 the Americas, and that's because while rabies existed in the 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:17.120 Americas through all this, rabid dogs probably did not, based 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:21.640 on genetic studies of the virus itself. Before European colonization, 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:27.240 rabies in the America's primarily infected bats and skunks. There's 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.880 some evidence that indigenous peoples in ancient Central and South 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:35.559 America regarded both bat bites and snake bites as potentially 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:40.000 dangerous and treated bat bites with washing and cauterization with 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:44.840 hot coals to try to prevent disease. Spanish colonists were 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:48.840 reported being bitten by bats in the early fifteen hundreds, 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:53.360 and in fifteen fourteen, Fernandez de Oviedo wrote about several 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:58.440 soldiers dying after being bitten by vampire bats. Dog rabies 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.280 is one of many diseases that Europeans introduced to the Americas, 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.760 and after that introduction it spread to other animals and 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.840 became far more likely to infect people, but that process 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.920 did not happen nearly as quickly with rabies as it 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:17.520 did with diseases like smallpox. Rabies typically has an incubation 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.320 period of roughly three to eight weeks, although it can 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:25.360 occasionally be much longer. Once symptoms appear, rabies is virtually 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.880 always fatal within about ten days. When Europeans first started 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:32.800 sailing to the Americas, the voyage often took more than 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:36.280 two months, so any dogs or other animals that had 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.720 been infected before setting sail usually developed symptoms and died 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.800 or were killed while still at sea. So that meant 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:48.120 introducing dog rabies to the Americas required a voyage that 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:52.400 was short enough for infected dogs to survive. It also 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.520 required a large enough population of dogs and other mammals 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.199 within a colony for the disease to keep circulating that 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:05.160 had been introduced. The first recorded outbreak of dog rabies 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.600 in the Americas was reported in Mexico City in seventeen 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.160 oh nine, and by the end of the eighteenth century, 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.640 dog rabies was widespread in most of the places in 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:19.400 the Americas that Europeans had colonized. This in turn spread 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.120 the disease to the continent's native animals, with some of 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.200 those exposures leading to new strains of the virus that 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:30.160 were adapted to specific species. We'll talk about how a 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.840 vaccine was developed to prevent rabies after a sponsor break. 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.880 By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, outbreaks of rabies were 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.040 spread across a lot of the world, in domesticated dogs 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.000 and in wild animals. In North America, rabies became so 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.840 widespread in skunks that they were nicknamed phobe Cats like 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.840 hydrophobe and phobe hens were advertised as a way for 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.080 cowboys to avoid being bitten by them in their sleep, 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.200 and eighteen oh three, an outbreak among wild foxes in 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:14.480 France spread to dogs, pigs, and people. Bites from rabid 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:18.480 wolves tended to be particularly lethal, in part because attacking 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:23.440 wolves often bit people's faces or necks, meaning the virus 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.040 was way closer to their brain, while rabid dogs usually 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.480 bit people's hands or arms. There was no cure for 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.160 rabies and no way to tell whether a person would 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.520 develop it after being bitten, and estimates of how many 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.800 people developed rabies after a bite stretch all the way 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.640 from five percent to fifty percent. Some of this is 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.480 just because of imprecise record keeping, but it's also connected 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.360 to how people responded to the disease. In many places, 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.520 there was a widespread assumption that any animal that bit 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.440 had rabies, and during outbreaks, people tended to hunt down 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.400 and kill animals that they thought might be spreading disease. 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:04.360 So a dog that bit someone in the midst of 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.280 all of this might be rabid, or it might just 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:11.240 be scared and cornered and trying to defend itself. Around 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.200 the world, people tried various herbs and medical preparations to 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.959 prevent or cure rabies, and because it was so lethal, 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.880 many of these also relied on the idea of divine intervention. 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:28.520 For example, Hubertus, also called Saint Hubert, is the patron 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.680 saint of hunting, and one of his reported miracles involved 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.600 curing somebody who had been bitten by a rabid dog. 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.040 So in much of Europe, people used a piece of 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:44.360 iron called Saint Hubert's key to cauterize bite wounds. As 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:46.960 part of this treatment, a priest would also make a 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.320 shallow cut over a person's forehead, place a black bandage 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.240 over that, and the person wore that bandage for nine days. 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.480 Some people even carried one of these keys around with 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.160 them for protection. Long before the development of the germ 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.480 theory of disease, people recognized that when someone was bitten 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.440 by a rabid animal, something in the animal's saliva was 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:12.280 going into the wound and potentially causing rabies. So some 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.319 of the other treatments for bites involved washing the wound, 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.400 applying caustic chemicals to it, or cauterizing it, whether it 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.640 was with a Saint Hubertus's key or with some other implement. 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.160 If these treatments were done immediately after a person was bitten, 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.720 they may have helped reduce the chance of developing rabies 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:35.520 by washing away the animals infected saliva. Thoroughly washing the 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.520 wound is still step one in rabies prevention today, but 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.440 none of this was enough to totally prevent the chance 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:46.320 of developing the fatal disease. People also tried to prevent 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.120 rabies by reducing the numbers of animals that could carry 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:53.080 it and transmit it to humans and to other animals. 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.840 For example, in eighteen sixty seven, the UK passed the 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:01.800 Metropolitan Streets Act. Among other things, this act empowered police 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.360 to collect and muzzle stray dogs, are dogs that were 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.080 determined to be dangerous. This reportedly led to a drop 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.960 in human cases of rabies in British cities. Also in 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:17.200 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, researchers were learning about rabies 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:20.480 and working on ways to prevent it spread. During the 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.560 earlier part of this time, researchers didn't yet know what 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.160 a virus was. But trying to talk around that got 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.440 really clunky. So we are still going to call it 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.440 a virus in our discussion today. Yeah, it was a 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.200 lot of incredibly stilted sentences before I was like, we're 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.040 just calling it a virus, regardless of whether that individual 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:44.520 researcher knew what a virus was. So in seventeen sixty nine, 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:50.480 Italian anatomist and pathologist John MORGANI observed that rabies traveled 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.920 via the nerves rather than traveling through the bloodstream. He 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.320 made this connection because some patients reported a feeling of 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.600 pins and needles or other neurological disturbances around the site 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:07.000 of their original bite wound. MORGANNYU was correct. Once it 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:11.160 enters the body. The rabies virus moves along the nerves 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.040 until it gets to the brain and the rest of 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:16.120 the central nervous system. After it gets to the brain, 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.320 the rabies virus makes its way to the salivary glands, 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.880 where it can cause excessive salivation. And although eighteenth century 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.440 researchers didn't quite have that part figured out, they did 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.160 know that the disease was spread through saliva. In seventeen 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.040 ninety three, Scottish surgeon John Hunter speculated that it would 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.400 be possible to use a lancet to intentionally introduce an 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.960 infected animal saliva into another animal, but it's not clear 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.440 whether he tried this in practice. We also don't know 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:51.960 whether German naturalist George Gottfried Zinka was familiar with Hunter's work, 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:56.120 but in eighteen oh four he brushed saliva from a 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.120 rabbit dog onto a cut he had made in the 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.160 leg of a health the dog. This previously healthy dog 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:07.800 contracted rabies. He did the same thing with other healthy mammals, 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:10.480 demonstrating that it was possible for the bite of an 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:14.719 infected dog to infect animals of other species. In eighteen 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:20.160 twenty one, French neurophysiologist Francois Magendi reported that he had 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:24.720 infected a previously healthy dog with saliva from a person 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:29.199 who had contracted rabies. Victor Gaultier was a professor at 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.919 the National Veterinary School in Lyon, France, and he started 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:37.399 experimenting with rabies in eighteen seventy nine. He found that 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:39.960 it was possible to transmit rabies from a dog to 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.240 a rabbit, and then from that rabbit to another rabbit. 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.159 Rabbits were smaller and easier to keep than dogs, and 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:50.920 they were less dangerous research subjects than rabbit dogs were. 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.840 Gaultier also found that the rabbits had a shorter incubation 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.200 period of about eighteen days rather than a month or 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.040 more that you might see in a dog. Gualtier did 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:06.040 various experiments with infected animal's saliva, attempting to see whether 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.600 he could find some way of using this infectious material 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.600 to prevent rabies. In eighteen eighty one, he injected rabies 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.400 virus into the jugular veins of sheep and they didn't 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.280 develop rabies, And then when he exposed one of them 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.960 to saliva from a rabid dog later on, it seemed 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.320 like it was immune to the disease. French chemist and 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:31.159 microbiologist Louis Pasteur started working on rabies at about this 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:36.000 same time, and he was inspired by Gautier's success. Pastor 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.000 already had an extensive background in this kind of work. 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:43.000 In the eighteen fifties, he had studied yeast and alcohol fermentation, 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.920 as well as the ability for microorganisms to contaminate fermenting beverages. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.880 This had contributed to both the germ theory of disease 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.119 and the development of pasteurization. In the eighteen sixties, he 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.760 had identified a microorganism that was devastating the French silk 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:03.240 in day, and in the eighteen seventies he studied animal 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:08.480 diseases like anthrax and chicken cholera, including developing an anthrax vaccine. 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.640 While Pasteur had lots of experience in this kind of research, 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.520 he had pretty much no experience in medicine or the 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.639 clinical treatment of patience, so he relied on other people 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.959 for this knowledge, including French physician and bacteriologist Emil Roux. 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:29.600 A whole team of other scientists and doctors were involved 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:34.000 in this work as well, including Chiles Chamberlain, Emil Duclaux, 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:39.119 Luis Jullier, and Joseph Granche. This is definitely not a 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:43.280 solo effort, and Pasteur was not always excited about crediting 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.760 other people for their involvement in it. There are even 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:50.679 some historians who have accused him of stealing other people's ideas. 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:55.520 Much of Pastor's previous work had involved culturing bacteria and 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.560 working from those cultures, and he started out trying to 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.760 do the same thing with Rabi's. Since Rabi's is caused 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.240 by a virus rather than a bacterium, Pastor's efforts to 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:10.000 replicate his earlier process failed. He started working directly with 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.119 the saliva of infected animals and then moved on to 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.560 working with central nervous system matter. He found that if 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.480 he exposed a healthy rabbit to rabies, it developed rabies. 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.320 Then if he used that rabbit's central nervous system matter 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:29.280 to expose another rabbit, that second rabbit also developed rabies, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.960 and the second rabbit's infection seemed to be more virulent 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:36.040 than the first. If he did this a third time, 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:40.159 the third rabbit's infection was also more virulent than the 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:45.000 seconds had been. He continued this serial passage of the 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.119 virus from rabbit to rabbit until he had a strain 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.600 of it that he described as fixed. It was consistent 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:55.840 and how virulent it was, and it had an incubation 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.600 period that was set at six or seven days. From there, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.120 mastor Air dried the spinal cords of rabbits that had 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:07.720 died of that highly virulent fixed strain. The longer they dried, 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:11.240 the weaker the virus became. That's a process called attenuation. 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.199 When he exposed other animals to a small amount of 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.159 this attenuated virus, they seemed to develop a resistance to 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:23.679 rabies rather than becoming ill. From there, Pastors started to 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.600 wonder whether it was possible to make an animal more 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.680 resistant to rabies after it had already been bitten, preventing 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:34.840 it from developing the disease. Having successfully tested out this 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.040 idea in dogs, he tried it on two people, but 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:41.719 he didn't publish on either of these attempts, so they 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.040 were not known about until much later. One of these 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.040 was a man who had been bitten by a dog, 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.320 and while this man survived, it's also likely that he 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.720 had not actually been exposed to rabies. The other was 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.320 an eleven year old girl who had been bitten in 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.480 the face by a puppy, and she had already started 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:03.200 developing rabies symptoms. She died the day after she was 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:07.200 given the treatment. On July fourth, eighteen eighty five, nine 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.560 year old Joseph Meister was repeatedly bitten by a dog 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:14.199 in Alces. The dog was believed to be rabid, and 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.200 two days later the child was brought to Pest for help. 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.159 Emil rou had been heavily involved in Pester's research up 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:23.600 to this point, and he refused to be involved in 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:28.119 the boy's treatment because of ethical concerns. Pastor expressed some 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:32.159 reluctance as well, but Joseph Groanche and Alfred Vaupien of 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:36.280 the Academy de Medcent encouraged him to try, with Granche 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:40.719 administering the treatment since Pastor was not a doctor, Joseph 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:43.840 was given a series of inoculations over the span of 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:48.440 ten days, starting with a very weak preparation and working 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:52.560 up through ones that were less and less attenuated. Three 0:22:52.600 --> 0:22:56.359 months later, he had no sign of rabies. Another attempt 0:22:56.400 --> 0:22:59.440 was started with another patient shortly after Joseph Meister was 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:03.320 declared to be in the clear. That was Jean Baptiste Jupelee, 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:06.560 a fourteen year old shepherd who had been mauled while 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.560 saving a group of younger boys from a dog. Pastor 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:13.600 reported his results to the French Academy of Science on 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:17.639 October twenty sixth, eighteen eighty five, while Jupeel's treatment was 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.600 still ongoing. Told about his success with Joseph Meister and 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.639 the fact that he had successfully inoculated fifty dogs against 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:29.080 rabies before trying this process on a human. We're going 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:31.600 to talk more about what happened with all of this 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:43.439 after we paused for a quick sponsor break. As a 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:47.159 word of Pastor's success at preventing rabies started to spread, 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.080 people started flocking to him for treatment. By the start 0:23:51.080 --> 0:23:53.960 of eighteen eighty six, he had treated at least three 0:23:54.119 --> 0:23:58.080 hundred and fifty people. They came from all over Europe 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.760 and from the United States. In early December of eighteen 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:05.920 eighty five, a dog bit at least seven other dogs 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:10.600 and six children in Newark, New Jersey. Word of Pastor's 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:13.080 work had made it to the US, and a local 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.920 doctor published an appeal for funds to send the boys 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.840 to Paris for treatment. Four of the boys were sent 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:24.399 to Paris by steamer. The other two were determined to 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:29.600 not have sufficient injuries to need treatment. American news coverage 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:32.040 of these boys tripped to Paris and then their return 0:24:32.119 --> 0:24:36.080 to the United States turned rabies vaccine into just a 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:40.840 media sensation, and three of the boys were displayed at 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:43.880 the Globe Museum in the Bowery in New York after 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:47.600 they all got home. Not everyone agreed with what Pasture 0:24:47.680 --> 0:24:51.760 and his team were doing. Anti vivisectionists objected to the 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:54.680 use of animals in this research, and as we've said, 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:58.400 not everyone who is bitten by a rabid animal contracts rabies, 0:24:58.880 --> 0:25:02.920 and not every animal who bite someone is rabbid. Since 0:25:02.920 --> 0:25:06.000 there was still not a test for rabies, determining whether 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:08.920 an animal had it usually involved just waiting to see 0:25:08.960 --> 0:25:12.240 if it died, but that wasn't really possible if it 0:25:12.240 --> 0:25:14.880 had already been killed, or if it just couldn't be found. 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.359 You could also expose a healthy animal to the brain 0:25:18.480 --> 0:25:21.439 or saliva of an animal who had bitten someone, but 0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:24.199 by the time the healthy animal showed any symptoms, it 0:25:24.320 --> 0:25:26.840 was just likely to be too late for the human patient. 0:25:27.359 --> 0:25:31.600 So critics made the point that Pasteur was potentially exposing 0:25:31.720 --> 0:25:36.320 people to rabies for no reason, and that his inoculation 0:25:36.680 --> 0:25:40.040 might cause somebody who had been bitten by a non 0:25:40.359 --> 0:25:44.240 rabid dog to then develop rabies because of their treatment. 0:25:44.960 --> 0:25:49.200 Critics also noted that some of Pasteur's patients did die. 0:25:49.480 --> 0:25:53.560 By November of eighteen eighty six, seventeen hundred patients had 0:25:53.600 --> 0:25:58.480 received rabies injections and ten of them had died. The uncertainty, 0:25:58.640 --> 0:26:02.040 combined with the death to spark a huge amount of 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:05.359 debate within the medical community about whether what Pasteur was 0:26:05.440 --> 0:26:10.159 doing was ethical or even medically necessary. The Academy de 0:26:10.240 --> 0:26:13.280