Facts About Rabies

Rabies is also sometimes known as hydrophobia or lysa. Rabies is from the Latin word rabere, which means to rave, indicating the deranged mental state of the patient. Lysa is a Greek word for frenzy, denoting the maniac convulsions of brain fever induced by the virus. Hydrophobia, the fear of water is one of the major signs of the disease in humans. The name "hydrophobia" is given only to the disease in humans, not to the disease in animals.

Rabies is essentially a virus disease of animals, which is transferred to man and other animals by means of a bite or a lick on a sore place, or through the mucous membranes of mouth and eyes, or in the case of transference from the vampire bat, by breathing in virus particles from the air where bats have been present in great concentration for example in caves or barns. Rabies is extremely unlikely to be contracted from any inanimate object like packaging, clothing or plant material.

Any warm-blooded animal, from a mouse or an elephant to a man may contract rabies, but some species, those which are normally "biters" are more prone to pass the disease on.

There are no recorded cases of rabies being passed from man to man in the past century.

The rabies virus is too small to be seen under an ordinary microscope but under the greater magnification of an electron microscope, the virus appears to be hood, or thimble shaped, with the outside surface covered in projecting spines.

The rabies virus lives only in the nerve tissue and saliva of infected subjects. It has an incubation period of enormously variable time, from as little as 10 days to over a year, before a rapid upsurge in multiplication of the virus produces unendurable physical and mental symptoms which terminate in death of the victim once the stage of showing brain inflammation is reached.

Although incubation for rabies is so long, the infected animal is not able to pass on the disease for the whole of the time. The virus only passes into the saliva of man or animal at the end of the incubation period, just before the warning symptoms are shown and after they are established, for the last few days of life.

Rabies has an extremely long incubation period which varies from case to case, followed by a progressive inflammation and breaking down of the central nervous system, when the disease spreads via the nerve cells to become concentrated in the area of the brain known as Ammon's Horn where it destroys the cells it infects.

Once the brain cells have been invaded by rabies, and destruction of cells has begun, the progress of the disease cannot be stopped even with the most sophisticated medical knowledge which we have at our disposal today.

One advantage we have against rabies is that the long incubation period allows steps to be taken to prevent the disease developing after a person has been exposed to rabies. This is not possible in the more common diseases like influenza or measles. Provided medical help is sought at once, after a bite or a lick from a suspected animal, anti-rabies vaccine can be given to stimulate production of antibodies before the virus starts to multiply and move from the site of the bite or lick into the nervous system.

Rabies virus is easily killed by sunlight, heat, formalin and standard disinfectants.