The rabies virus belongs to the group of viruses that are described as bullet shaped or bacilliform. It is able to infect all warm-blooded animals and has a highly complex structure. It measures 140 x 100 nanometres (a nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre) and forty would stretch across a red blood cell.In 1881 Dr Emile Roux, Pasteur's colleague isolated a virus that produces one of the most horrific diseases known to man. The virus in question was rabies. The Latin origin of the word comes from the sanskrit rabhar, (to do violence).
Rabies has been recorded for more than two thousand years. Aristotle was aware of the disease and the possibility that it was transmitted by animal bites, it was also mentioned by Hippocrates in the fourth and fifth centuries.
In the Middle Ages, some records show that rabies was well established in Europe and Britain and by the twelfth century some records started to mention that wildlife was implicated. Europe had epidemics of rabies in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and by the end of the eighteenth century, rabid dogs were reported in London.
At this time, attention was focused on how the disease affected domestic animals, particularly the dog as well as humans, however after the Nepolionic wars, attention was turned to the fox as they were infected.
Rabies spread to Switzerland between 1800 and 1835, entered Germany and Bavaria in 1920 and then the Black Forest by 1925.
Britain's first documented account of rabies was in the Laws of Howel the Good of Wales in 1026 and the last account of rabies being documented was 1903. Therefore it is only a comparatively short time that Britain has been rabies free.
In the 1790's rabies was such a problem that two shillings was paid for each mad dog killed and some years later, paupers were not allowed to keep dogs in an attempt to reduce the dog numbers. London and Lancashire appear to have been the predominant areas with the disease in the nineteenth century and in 1864 one thousand stray dogs were destroyed in an attempt to halt the disease.
The Metropolitan Streets Act was passed in 1876 after thirty-six people died from the disease. This empowered the police to catch stray dogs. Rabies, by then, had extended to Yorkshire and Scotland. In 1874, seventy-four people died from rabies and as a result, the Rabies Order Act was passed in 1877. This Act made it illegal for a dog to be unmuzzled. This appears not to have been successful, as owners did not comply with the Act.
In 1897 police received powers to seize stray dogs and at the same time, Parliament imposed a six months quarantine period on imported dogs. Rabies disappeared from Britain in 1903. Due to these rigorous measures rabies did not become endemic in Britain's wildlife, as it has in so many other countries.
Rabies occurs on all continents but not in most of Oceania. Several countries are free from the infection; among them are Ireland and Great Britain.
Although the bite / break of the skin method of transmission is the primary course, it has been reported that other avenues exist. In 1978 a woman receiving a corneal transplant in Idaho died as the donor had been incubating rabies. Two men died after exploring caves in Texas in 1950. The caves were inhabited by Mexican Freetailed bats, some of who were found to be rabid. The cave's air was found to support a fine suspension of the virus coming from the bat's saliva. It is suggested that the mode of transmission was by inhalation or skin abrasions. In 1972 a veterinary surgeon died after working with a rabid goat brain.
The well-known aspect of rabies is the frenzied rage, which is present in many cases. It causes the infected animal to become out of control and bite indiscriminately due to the virus multiplying in the brain. The other form of rabies is the dumb or paralytic type, which is characterised by a gradual ascending paralysis. The animal suffers from a creeping paralysis but remains a hazard, as a lick, involving infected saliva, will transmit the disease if in contact with an abrasion. The incubation period of the disease is variable, ranging from nine days to eight weeks or longer. The lower part of the brain stem takes the full impact of the virus, which results in coma and death due to the paralysis of the vital breathing and swallowing muscles
In man the disease causes a severe inflammation of the brain and spinal chord associated with the invasion of the tissues by the rabies virus. It is virtually always fatal. The disease presents itself in the recognised horrific way, with severe seizures, hydrophobia, with periods of calm ending with coma and death.
Hydrophobia, (fear of water) was once an alternative name for rabies as the victim has violent spasms when he sees or tries to drink water. The same reaction is possible when a draught of air touches the face, aerophobia (fear of air).
Rabies is considered to be a horrific disease resulting in a terrible death. Rabies however has never reached epidemic levels like the Black Death did or influenza still does. With the advent of reduced quarantine regulations in this country, rabies becomes, 'a potential hazard', this fact should not be taken lightly as it has considerable implications for us all.