Foaming at the mouth, difficulty swallowing, a maniacal fear of
water, anger and hostility, delusions and hallucinations, general
all-round insanity.
You may recognize these symptoms from
that pack of rabid raccoons in your backyard, but a couple of hundred
years ago, a lot more humans found themselves acting like those
unfortunate animals.
Back before Louis Pasteur's
groundbreaking vaccine hit the scene in 1885, rabies was a widely feared
disease (and it still is in some parts of the world). Spread through
saliva (usually through dog bites), the rabies virus attacks the nervous
system; once it's gotten to your brain, it's pretty much over.
Today, mandatory animal vaccination
programs have pretty much wiped out the disease in humans in the
developed world, but the disease still kills millions of animals and up
to 50,000 people worldwide each year. Consider that a reminder to
vaccinate Fluffy.
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