{"id":18419,"date":"2019-10-30T01:16:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T01:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18419"},"modified":"2019-10-31T05:51:48","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T05:51:48","slug":"rabies-horrifying-symptoms-inspired-folktales-of-humans-turned-into-werewolves-vampires-and-other-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/rabies-horrifying-symptoms-inspired-folktales-of-humans-turned-into-werewolves-vampires-and-other-monsters\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabies’ horrifying symptoms inspired folktales of humans turned into werewolves, vampires and other monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica Wang<\/a>, University of British Columbia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In 1855, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on the gruesome murder of a bride by her new husband. The story came from the French countryside, where the woman\u2019s parents had initially prevented the couple\u2019s engagement \u201con account of the strangeness of conduct sometimes observed in the young man,\u201d although he \u201cotherwise was a most eli[g]ible match.\u201d<\/p>\n

The parents eventually consented, and the marriage took place. Shortly after the newlyweds withdrew to consummate their bond, \u201cfearful shrieks\u201d came from their quarters. People quickly arrived to find \u201cthe poor girl\u2026 in the agonies of death \u2014 her bosom torn open and lacerated in a most horrible manner, and the wretched husband in a fit of raving madness and covered with blood, having actually devoured a portion of the unfortunate girl\u2019s breast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bride died a short time later. Her husband, after \u201ca most violent resistance,\u201d also expired.<\/p>\n

What could have caused this horrifying incident? \u201cIt was then recollected, in answer to searching questions by a physician,\u201d that the groom had previously \u201cbeen bitten by a strange dog.\u201d The passage of madness from dog to human seemed like the only possible reason for the grisly turn of events.<\/p>\n

The Eagle described the episode matter-of-factly as \u201ca sad and distressing case of hydrophobia,\u201d or, in today\u2019s parlance, rabies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the account read like a Gothic horror story. It was essentially a werewolf narrative: The mad dog\u2019s bite caused a hideous metamorphosis, which transformed its human victim into a nefarious monster whose vicious sexual impulses led to obscene and loathsome violence.<\/p>\n

My new book, \u201cMad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920<\/a>,\u201d explores the hidden meanings behind the ways people talked about rabies. Variants of the rabid groom story had been told and retold in English language newspapers in North America since at least the beginning of the 18th century, and they continued to appear as late as the 1890s.<\/p>\n

The Eagle\u2019s account was, in essence, a folk tale about mad dogs and the thin dividing line between human and animal. Rabies created fear because it was a disease that seemed able to turn people into raging beasts.<\/p>\n

A terrifying and fatal disease<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
A werewolf wreaks havoc in this 1512 woodcut.<\/span>
\nLucas Cranach the Elder, Herzogliches Museum\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The historian Eugen Weber once observed that French peasants in the 19th century feared \u201cabove all wolves, mad dogs, and fire<\/a>.\u201d Canine madness \u2013 or the disease that we know today as rabies \u2013 conjured up the canine terrors that have formed the stuff of nightmares for centuries.<\/p>\n

Other infectious diseases<\/a> \u2013 including cholera, typhoid and diphtheria \u2013 killed far more people<\/a> in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The cry of \u201cMad dog!\u201d nonetheless sparked an immediate sense of terror, because a simple dog bite could mean a protracted ordeal of grueling symptoms, followed by certain death.<\/p>\n

Modern medicine knows that rabies is caused by a virus. Once it enters the body, it travels to the brain via the nervous system. The typical lag time of weeks or months between initial exposure and onset of symptoms means that rabies is no longer a death sentence if a patient quickly receives injections of immune antibodies<\/a> and vaccine, in order to build immunity soon after encountering a suspect animal. Though it\u2019s rare for people to die of rabies in the U.S., the disease still kills tens of thousands of people globally every year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The virus affects the brain, as seen with the darker purple inclusions, called negri bodies, in the brain cells of someone who died of rabies.<\/span>
\nCDC\/Dr. Makonnen Fekadu<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to 19th-century sources<\/a>, after an incubation period of between four and 12 weeks, symptoms might start with a vague sense of agitation or restlessness. They then progressed to the wracking spasmodic episodes characteristic of rabies, along with sleeplessness, excitability, feverishness, rapid pulse, drooling and labored breathing. Victims not infrequently exhibited hallucinations or other mental disruptions as well.<\/p>\n

Efforts to mitigate violent outbursts with drugs often failed, and physicians could then do little more than stand by and bear witness. Final release came only after the disease ran its inevitably fatal course, usually over a period of two to four days. Even today, rabies remains essentially incurable once clinical signs appear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Centuries ago, the loss of bodily control and rationality triggered by rabies seemed like an assault on victims\u2019 basic humanity. From a real dreaded disease transmitted by animals emerged spine-tingling visions of supernatural forces that transferred malevolent animals\u2019 powers and turned people into monsters.<\/p>\n

Bites that transform people into animals<\/h2>\n

Nineteenth-century American accounts never invoked the supernatural directly. But descriptions of symptoms indicated unspoken assumptions about how the disease transmitted the biting animal\u2019s essence to the suffering human.<\/p>\n

Newspapers frequently described those who contracted rabies from dog bites as barking and snarling like dogs, while cat-bite victims scratched and spat. Hallucinations, respiratory spasms and out-of-control convulsions produced fearful impressions of the rabid animal\u2019s evil imprint.<\/p>\n

Traditional preventive measures also showed how Americans quietly assumed a blurred boundary between humanity and animality. Folk remedies held that dog-bite victims could protect themselves from rabies by killing the dog that had already bitten them, or applying the offending dog\u2019s hair to the wound, or cutting off its tail.<\/p>\n

Such preventatives implied a need to cut an invisible, supernatural tie between a dangerous animal and its human prey.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the disease left eerie traces. When a Brooklynite died from rabies in 1886, the New York Herald recorded a freakish occurence: Within minutes after the man\u2019s last breath, \u201cthe bluish ring on his hand \u2013 the mark of the Newfoundland\u2019s fatal bite\u2026disappeared.\u201d Only death broke the mad dog\u2019s pernicious hold.<\/p>\n

Vampires\u2019 roots in rabid dogs<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s possible that, along with werewolves, vampire stories also originated from rabies.<\/p>\n

Physician Juan G\u00f3mez-Alonso has pointed out a resonance between vampirism and rabies<\/a> in the hair-raising symptoms of the disease \u2013 the distorted sounds, exaggerated facial appearances, restlessness and sometimes wild and aggressive behaviors that made sufferers seem more monstrous than human.<\/p>\n

Extreme oversensitivity to stimuli, which set off the tortuous spasmodic episodes associated with rabies, could have a particularly strange effect. A glance at a mirror might set off a violent response, in a chilling parallel with the living-dead vampire\u2019s inability to cast a reflection.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in different eastern European folkloric traditions, vampires turned themselves not into bats, but into wolves or dogs, the key vectors of rabies.<\/p>\n

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The fun of a Halloween werewolf hints at the fear of a person becoming an animal.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Daniel Hulshizer<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So as aspiring werewolves, vampires and other haunts take to the streets for Halloween, remember that beneath the annual ritual of candy and costumed fun lie the darker recesses of the imagination. Here animals, disease and fear intermingle, and monsters materialize at the crossover point between animality and humanity.<\/p>\n

Cave canem \u2013 beware the dog.<\/p>\n

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Jessica Wang is the author of:<\/header>\n

Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920.<\/a>\"The<\/p>\n