Rabies is a disease we seldom encounter in modern Britain, but in Regency England it was a frightening and very real threat. Often called hydrophobia when it appeared in humans, or described as canine madness when it afflicted dogs, rabies was well known long before physicians understood viruses or had any reliable means of preventing the disease after a dangerous exposure.

I touch upon rabies in Forsaking All Others, A Pride and Prejudice Variation. It is one of those subjects that required some research because people living in Jane Austen's time understood certain things about the disease surprisingly well, while other beliefs about its causes and treatment were very different from what we know today.

The Fear of a Mad Dog

Dogs were common throughout Regency England. They served as hunting dogs, watchdogs, working animals, and companions. Dogs could also roam freely, particularly in towns and villages, making an encounter with an unfamiliar animal an ordinary occurrence.

A strangely behaving dog could therefore inspire genuine fear.

People knew that the bite of a mad dog could transmit a deadly illness. They also knew something particularly disturbing about rabies: a person might appear perfectly well after being bitten and then become ill weeks later.

Modern medicine tells us that rabies is caused by a virus transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal, most commonly through a bite. The virus travels through the nerves toward the brain and spinal cord. The incubation period varies greatly. Symptoms most commonly develop after several weeks or months, although the interval can sometimes be much longer.

Regency physicians did not understand the virus, but they recognized the connection between the bite of a rabid animal and the terrible illness that could follow.

Why Was It Called Hydrophobia?

One of the most famous symptoms of human rabies gave the disease its historical name: hydrophobia, meaning fear of water.

The name can be somewhat misleading. A person suffering from rabies does not simply become psychologically frightened of water. As the disease attacks the nervous system, attempting to swallow can cause painful involuntary spasms of the muscles involved in swallowing and breathing. Even the sight or anticipation of drinking may eventually trigger distress.

Other symptoms can include fever, agitation, confusion, abnormal sensations around the original bite, hallucinations, difficulty swallowing, and eventually paralysis and death.

Once these unmistakable neurological symptoms appeared, a Regency physician could offer little hope.

That knowledge made the period after a suspicious dog bite especially frightening. The wound might heal and the victim might remain healthy for weeks, but there was no reliable way to know whether the danger had passed.

What Could a Regency Physician Do?

Long before the Regency, people understood that the wound itself was important. Washing and treating the bite was sometimes recommended, and physicians employed a variety of methods intended to prevent the poison, as they might have described it, from spreading through the body.

The wound might be cut, cauterized, or treated with substances believed capable of destroying or drawing out the infectious material. Numerous supposed remedies for hydrophobia circulated over the centuries, but none could reliably prevent rabies once infection had become established.

Physicians also attempted to relieve the suffering of patients who developed symptoms. Opium and laudanum were among the medicines used to calm agitation and spasms.

Unfortunately, there was no effective cure.

The great breakthrough came long after Jane Austen's lifetime. In 1885, Louis Pasteur successfully used post-exposure vaccination to prevent rabies in Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old boy who had been badly bitten by a rabid dog.

Nothing comparable was available to someone bitten in 1811.

What Did People Believe Caused Rabies?

Regency ideas about rabies included a mixture of accurate observation and mistaken theories.

The connection between bites and subsequent illness was well recognized. However, many people also believed that canine madness might arise spontaneously under certain conditions rather than always being transmitted from an infected animal.

Heat was frequently blamed. The so-called Dog Days of summer were particularly associated with fears of mad dogs. Thirst, lack of water, poor food, mistreatment, excitement, and excessive heat were among the circumstances sometimes thought capable of causing madness in a previously healthy dog.

We now know that these conditions do not create rabies. An animal must become infected with the virus.

The association between hot weather and mad dogs nevertheless remained deeply rooted in popular belief.

Dogs Were Not the Only Animals at Risk

Although dogs were the animals most strongly associated with rabies in Britain, they were not the only ones capable of contracting it.

Rabies can infect mammals, and historical British accounts include the disease in cattle, horses, sheep, deer, and other animals. An infected dog that attacked livestock could therefore create a serious problem for a farmer or landowner as well as a danger to people.

This is one reason rabies interested me when writing Forsaking All Others. For a gentleman responsible for a large country estate, a suspected mad dog would not merely be an unpleasant encounter. It could threaten servants, tenants, children, livestock, valuable horses, hunting dogs, and household pets.

A landowner would have good reason to take the matter seriously.

Would a Rabid Dog Always Look Ferocious?

The familiar image is of a raging animal foaming at the mouth and attacking everything it encounters, but rabies does not always present that way.

Even historically, observers recognized different forms of the disease. Some affected dogs became excited, restless, aggressive, and inclined to bite. Others developed a more paralytic form in which weakness and paralysis became prominent.

That uncertainty made the danger more difficult to judge. Not every aggressive dog was rabid, and not every rabid dog necessarily behaved like the terrifying "mad dog" of popular imagination.

Without modern laboratory testing, people had to rely largely upon the circumstances of the attack and the animal's behavior.

Rabies in Jane Austen's World

Jane Austen does not make rabies an important subject in her novels. That does not mean her characters would have been unfamiliar with it.

A gentleman such as Mr. Darcy, responsible for Pemberley and the people and animals living upon the estate, would certainly have understood the danger posed by a dog believed to be mad. So would farmers, huntsmen, stablemen, physicians, and many ordinary people.

I wove a rabies scene into the last chapter of my most recent book, Forsaking All Others, A Pride and Prejudice Variation. You can find this and all my books on Kindle Unlimited.

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