History of rabies: advances in research towards rabies prevention during the last 30 years

The great amount of basic research on rabies virus in the last 30 years has led to important improvements in the methods used for the prevention of rabies--methods that include rapid laboratory diagnosis, production of cell culture vaccine, and the means for controlling wildlife rabies. These advances are briefly reviewed.

Rabies contingency plans in the United Kingdom

The history of rabies in UK is described briefly. Details follow of the comprehensive import controls and quarantine procedures applying to the major vectors of rabies, which are detained for six months. Outbreak control is based on prompt notification and investigation, with infected areas if required. If rabies became widespread in wildlife, the use of oral vaccine would be considered.

Triumph and controversy. Pasteur's preventive treatment of rabies as reported in JAMA

Louis Pasteur's vaccine against rabies, introduced 100 years ago, was greeted by the American medical community with a mixture of praise and skepticism. These sentiments as well as details of Pasteur's landmark discoveries appeared in late-19th-century articles in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

[Rabies prevention in the Netherlands. Study on the ingestion of bait by foxes]

A review of the history of the rabies situation in Europe, and specifically The Netherlands, is followed by a discussion of the measures so far adopted to control rabies among foxes. The ingestion of bait by foxes is then studied in view of possible oral vaccination against rabies. The Veluwe, situated in the middle of The Netherlands, was selected as a trial field. Boars live next to foxes here, and their food is comparable. Over sixty per cent of the foxes studied took the bait. Oral rabies vaccination can therefore also be carried out in foxes in the Veluwe area if required.

[Histological research on rabies in the 19th century]

From 1872 to 1887, several works were published in which rabies were described as if they were only connected with blood-vessels and interstitial tissue, and so the disease was considered as a circulatory one, affecting the nervous system only secondarily. The histological study of the nervous system by Babès (1887), started off the second period of the microscopical study of rabies lesions. He directed his investigations towards the motor nuclei of the bulb, the medulla and the periventricular grey substance and individualized "rabic nodules', which presence, however, is not always noticeable. As contrasted with Babès, Van Gehuchten and Nelis (1900) demonstrated the occurrence of ganglionic lesions (peripheric, cerebrospinal and sympathic ganglia) which seemed constant and therefore having an incontestable diagnostic value. But it was only in 1903 when Negri discovered the corpuscules, bearing his name, in the cells of the Ammon's horn of rabic animals, that it was possible to establish an accurate cytological diagnosis of rabies. However, his interpretation (parasites belonging to the Protozoa) proved to be wrong.

Rabies archaeologorum

This paper falls a little outside the normal scope of a paper for the Chateau Gaillard conference. It may not even be a paper, but—to use contemporary language—rather an anti-paper. Possibly, it will shock some of the audience. If so, I would like to say that such people need the shock.

The paper will not bring news from excavations, neither any new interpretations nor suggestions for new excavations. On the contrary, it deals with what should be left unexcavated. I intend to advance the opinion that generally too much is too ruthlessly excavated in places where the archaeological remains are not threatened by destruction.

This last phrase is the important one. It is evident that where archaeological sites are going to be removed anyhow due to construction of new roads, building activities or whatever may be the cause, it will always be an act of merit to squeeze every piece of archaeological information out of them by excavation beforehand. Therefore, the points of view advanced in this paper do not comprise rescue operations, but only the excavation of sites protected by the law, or by considerate owners, and consequently not exposed to any immediate danger of removal or other destructive activities.

The development of the virus concept as reflected in corpora of studies on individual pathogens. 4. Rabies--Two millennia of ideas and conjecture on the aetiology of a virus disease

Images

Distribution of animal rabies in Zambia and its potential danger to the human population

The incidence and distribution of animal rabies in Zambia during the period 1914-1975 has been outlined. At present rabies is present in all provinces of Zambia and most prevalent in the Central, Southern, Copperbelt and Eastern Provinces. The dog is the main carrier of the infection and is responsible for 82.7% of all positive cases.