Text | Zhang Qingfeng
Edit | Zhang Qingfeng
Although people today regard dogs as treasures and family members, there are still many dogs who attack the people around them and even their owners as if they were inexplicably convulsive.
And being bitten like this is indispensable to spend a small thousand dozen rabies vaccines.
It's not that they are afraid of their pets' scratches, what they are afraid of is the rabies virus hidden in their pets.
Without a few shots of prevention, they would not dare to gamble on the consequences of 100% death from rabies.
But then again, people today can get rid of the rabies virus that animals may carry through rabies vaccination, so what about the ancients? In the era when vaccines were not yet available, what methods did the ancients use to avoid rabies?
A long-standing fear of rabies
Rabies existed before it was officially named in 1888, and it was even thousands of years old.
However, it should be noted that in addition to animals such as bats, wolves and cats that carry the rabies virus, the main carriers of the rabies virus are mainly "dogs", and it is not without reason to call it rabies.
And these prevention and control methods are mainly aimed at dogs, which are the main carriers.
The disease was described in the 2300 BC Code of Eshnunna.
"If a dog goes mad, the administrator of the authority immediately informs its owner, and if the owner does not care, or does not obey the law, he allows the dog to go mad and harm the safety of other citizens and slaves. ”
Not only were the dogs killed on the spot, but their owners were also required to pay 27 shekels (an ancient silver coin weighing about 16 grams) and 15 shekels for slaves. ”
In the Spring and Autumn Period, the ancient work "Zuo Chuan" on the mainland also recorded to a certain extent the harm of mad dog bites, as well as some preventive measures.
"In the seventeenth year of Lu Xianggong (556 B.C.), in November, the people of Jiawu chased the dogs. ”
This is to the effect that during the period of Lu Xianggong, the people of Lu once drove mad dogs outside the city with one heart and one mind, and in order to avoid the spread of rabies in the city - it can be seen the wisdom of the ancients.
In ancient times, people did not have access to effective medical treatment for rabies, but the expulsion of mad dogs and even the killing of them on the spot can be regarded as a clever strategy in that era.
However, neither the Zuo Biography nor the Code of Eshnunna mention the specific symptoms of a rabid dog bite, and it was not until the first century in Rome that rabies was specifically recorded.
When the Roman physician Celsus described rabies, he used the word virus, which in his time (i.e., Latin) meant saliva.
This meant that Celsus had known that the virus was transmitted through the saliva of the mad dogs.
And some unlucky eggs have a lot of abnormalities after being bitten by a mad dog.
According to his records, early rabies patients will have headaches and nausea, and even their mental state is quite low.
But in the middle stage, these patients who were originally depressed showed inexplicable excitement and confusion (mental), and even spoke incoherently.
In addition, they also show a rather terrible aversion to water, unwilling to touch water or drink water, even though their bodies are already suffering from chronic dehydration.
In the late stage, these strangely behaved patients developed flaccid paralysis and eventually died of respiratory failure.
What's even more terrifying is that from the onset of the patient's illness to the patient's death, the period is only less than six days, and the onset of the disease is desperately fast.
Although Celsus sympathized with these patients in his heart, limited by the medical vision and methods at the time, even if he knew the spread and pathogenesis of rabies, a famous doctor like him was still helpless against them.
And not only Celsus, but even those imperial doctors in ancient times on the continent were helpless against rabies for a long time.
In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu An, the king of Huainan, once said in his book "Huainanzi Bian's Commentary": "Those who break bows are afraid of crime and are afraid of punishment, and they are frightened by the dog, so as to kill Ziyang." ”
Liu An meant that some people were afraid that Ziyang, the person in power, would ask him for his guilt, so he borrowed a mad dog, that is, a dog carrying rabies, and killed Ziyang with bad intentions.
Because this is a sharp weapon that many people know, even the top imperial doctors of the dynasty at that time were a little helpless against this disease - the severity of rabies can be seen.
But then again, did the ancients, who knew astronomy and geography, really have nothing to do about this disease?
The prevention and control methods of the ancients
In the face of rabies, the ancients did not really have the slightest solution.
In addition to the methods mentioned in the previous records to drive dogs and even kill dogs, the ancients really accidentally discovered a prevention and control method similar to "rabies vaccine" through trial and error.
As early as the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties in the mainland, a medical scientist named Ge Hong in the Eastern Jin Dynasty began to make some small-scale observations and even clinical trials for these "unpreventable" rabies.
In his book "Elbow Reserve Emergency Prescription", there is such a record: "Once a mad dog (mad dog) bites, most of the bitten people will become extremely painful, and they will not be stimulated at all. ”
At the beginning, Ge Hong was indeed helpless against these patients, but in the process of the onset of the patients, Ge Hong inexplicably remembered a successful case of fighting poison with poison in "The Yellow Emperor's Neijing".
"The Yellow Emperor's Neijing" once said that it is a medicine with three poisons, but if there is no certain toxicity, it may not cure good people. ”
Ge Hong felt that he could also try to fight poison with poison as the "Yellow Emperor's Neijing" said, after all, in his eyes, the situation of these patients was bad enough, and no matter how bad it was, it would be difficult to get worse.
So after discussing with the family, Ge Hong began to hunt the mad dog with the hired strong man, and immediately took out the mad dog's brain after the killing.
After using a certain degree of drug to control the toxicity, Ge Hong dared to put a small part of the mashed dog brain on the patient's wound.
And such a smear really made him see a certain effect.
Except for some advanced patients who really can't be saved, most of the patients' conditions have improved to a certain extent, or even no longer have the disease at all.
Even if it occurs again, there is a high probability that it will no longer be rabies.
So much so that after people praised Ge Hong as a miracle doctor, they began to use the dog brain of a mad dog to prevent and treat it, which greatly reduced the probability of death from being bitten by a mad dog.
But this is just a helpless move, after all, it will be thousands of years before the rabies vaccine comes out.
The first dose of rabies vaccine is introduced
China's rabies is controlled by Ge Hong's earthwork, but what about the West?
It was not until 1885 that Louis Pasteur of France developed the first rabies vaccine.
In France in 1885, there was a little boy who was bitten beyond recognition by several mad dogs, although his life was temporarily saved, but the hidden danger of rabies made people not know when it would attack.
So the parents really had no choice, so they had to send the child to the major hospitals again and again, but those famous doctors were helpless against rabies, and even sentenced the little boy to death immediately.
In the end, there was really no way, so the family had to rely on the relationship and found the famous French microbiologist Pasteur, thinking that he had a high attainment in microbiology and should be able to save the child, and Pasteur really had it.
Pasteur once found that the spinal fluid of the carrier had a certain immune effect on rabies on rabbits carrying rabies, but he was limited by the channel and did not experiment on living people.
But seeing that the child was in danger, the parents couldn't control too much, so they had to urge Pasteur to use their own children to experiment.
After 13 seed coat injections over a period of 10 days, the little boy was actually cured by Pasteur.
After suppressing the joy, Pasteur successfully promoted the rabies vaccine to the whole country and even the world, so that more people could avoid the deadly threat of rabies.
It's okay to love dogs, but if you really love dogs, it's better to get vaccinated against rabies as soon as possible and try to keep them on a leash when you go out to avoid possible troubles and tragedies.