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2006-07-19 14:41:02 · 2 answers · asked by Laura F 1 in Science & Mathematics Biology

2 answers

"Rabies is a very old disease, perhaps as old as humankind. The word rabies has its origin in Sanskrit, 3000 years BBC: "rabhas" means "to do violence". The Greek word for rabies, "lyssa" derives from the root "lud" which means "violent". Thus, the family of viruses to which rabies belongs is lyssa. The first description of the disease dates from the 23rd. century BC in the Eshuma Code of Babylon. Antiquity, did know rabies as well as the link between human disease and animals, especially dogs. But, it is a famous Italian scholar, Girolamo Fracastoro, born in Verona, who described the disease, which obviously he had seen in many patients, and its routes of contamination in 1530, i.e. 350 years before Louis Pasteur.
In the 19th. century, canine or street rabies was a scourge everywhere, especially in Europe. Fear of rabies, related to the mode of contamination, the absence of any efficacious treatment, was almost irrational. Patients killed themselves or were killed when bitten by a dog believed to be rabid. In this world of irrational terror the first post-exposure treatment in 1885 gave Louis Pasteur an international aura that his previous major scientific works had not been able to provide."

(Louis Pasteur devised the first rabies vaccine in 1885.)

2006-07-19 14:55:59 · answer #1 · answered by ♪ ♫ ☮ NYbron ☮ ♪ ♫ 6 · 0 0

The rabies virus diddnt just spontaneously generate...no one knows the year it evolved, which can possibly be between several centuries to several million years ago.

2006-07-19 21:49:47 · answer #2 · answered by CB 3 · 0 1

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