How superstition, pseudoscience, and profit turned a non-existent condition into one of medicine’s most enduring myths
For more than 150 years, we’ve been told that rabies is one of the deadliest diseases on Earth. The official story goes like this: Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and it kills nearly 60,000 people every year, mostly children in poor, rural communities in developing countries, mostly in Asia and Africa. We’re told it exists on every continent except Antarctica, that it’s most often transmitted through a dog bite, and that it can only be stopped by vaccination.
The World Organisation for Animal Health ( WOAH, formerly OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO) claim the rabies virus sits at the bite site before travelling along the nerves to the brain, causing inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. They describe two forms — one called furious rabies, with hyperactivity and fear of water, and another called paralytic rabies, with progressive paralysis.
We’re told the bite from an infected animal requires immediate vaccination, and rabies is one of the only diseases for which the vaccine can be given after exposure. We’re told that vaccinating 70% of dogs will eradicate rabies.
But this narrative is full of contradictions. If rabies truly exists everywhere, why is it supposedly concentrated among poor rural children? If it’s carried by many different species, including dogs, bats, raccoons, and cats, then why would vaccinating only dogs stop it? And if viruses are inert outside a living cell, how can one travel through the body on its own?
Also, did you know that the father of germ theory, Louis Pasteur himself, is the first person credited with creating a rabies vaccine?
Before Pasteur: Rabies Was Folklore
Before the late 1800s, rabies was not a proven disease; it was a mere superstition. People believed in what they called royal cures – the kiss of a king would cure rabies. It was later discovered that a piece of the king’s garment would be as efficacious. Other cures included magical “mad stones” pressed to the bite, chewing hair from the dog that bit you, or swallowing bizarre concoctions like ground-up jawbone of an ass or dog, colt’s tongue, and green rust from old coins.
These weren’t science. They were cultural rituals built on fear and misunderstanding. Eventually, Louis Pasteur came along to give a scientific veneer to some of these traditions, but contrary to popular belief, he didn’t replace actual superstition with genuine science. He simply gave the old fears a new, scientific costume.
Pasteur’s Brutal Quackery
Pasteur had no medical degree. His rabies experiments were nothing more than animal torture. He bored holes into rabbits’ skulls and injected decomposing matter directly into their brains. This method guaranteed brain damage and neurological symptoms, but it had nothing to do with how a real-life dog bite would happen in nature.
He never isolated a rabies virus, never proved transmission from a naturally bitten animal to a human, and never showed that his vaccine could prevent anything. However, the spectacle of his supposed cures won him fame, and his rabies vaccine became one of medicine’s most celebrated and profitable creations.
Contemporaries Who Called It Out
Not everyone bought the story. Many of Pasteur’s own contemporaries accused him of fraud and incompetence:
- Dr. William A. Bruette — Showed rabies vaccine was a fraud that spread disease, calling its sale “an out-and-out racket.”
- Dr. Matthew Woods — After 25 years at the Philadelphia dog pound, handling 150,000 dogs with frequent bites, reported zero cases of rabies. Concluded so-called rabies in animals was due to maltreatment or malnutrition.
- Dr. George Wilson — President of the British Medical Society. Dr. Wilson called Pasteur’s anti-rabies vaccine “a piece of deception.”
- Dr. Charles W. Dulles — Investigated for 16 years and concluded “there is no such specific malady” as rabies.
The Missing Virus
Even decades after the invention of the electron microscope, no one, not Pasteur, not the Pasteur Institute, not any successor, has ever identified a rabies virus. No isolation means no proof of viral causation. Without that, the entire claim of rabies as a contagious viral disease collapses.
The Negri Body Problem
For years, Negri bodies in brain tissue were called proof of rabies. However, these formations are not specific to rabies as they can be found in healthy animals. Even the Pasteur Institute admitted this. The diagnosis was based on interpretation, not hard evidence.
The Historical Record Tells a Different Story
When you look at actual records, the rabies scare falls apart:
- London Hospital — 2,668 dog-bite patients, zero rabies without treatment.
- St. George’s Hospital — 4,000 “mad dog” bites, no rabies.
- Philadelphia Dog Pound — 150,000 dogs in 25 years, no rabies despite frequent bites.
- Dr. J.W. Hodge — Documented over 2,500 deaths from Pasteur’s treatment — many in people never bitten.
Fear as a Cause: Lyssophobia
Natural Hygiene teaches us that fear itself is a poison to the body. History is full of cases where the belief in rabies caused symptoms and death:
- A man lived 15 years after a dog bite but died within weeks after hearing his friend, who had been bitten by the same dog, had died.
- A woman died after rabies treatment, later found to have been bitten by her boyfriend, not a dog.
This fear-induced condition was once called lyssophobia or “imaginary hydrophobia.”
Animal “Rabies”: What’s Really Going On
Animals labeled “rabid” are usually suffering from:
- Parasitic infestations due to malnutrition and toxemia (i.e. heartworms)
- Malnutrition (weakening the nervous system)
- Poisoning (pesticides, environmental toxins, abuse)
None of these are contagious viruses.
The Vaccine Problem
Pasteur’s rabies vaccine, and all that followed, rests on the same flawed theory. It injects poisons into healthy bodies based on an unproven contagion. The results?
- In animals: vomiting, fever, lethargy, severe allergic reactions, and death. All of these are acknowledged by the American Veterinary Medical Association.
- In humans: pain, dizziness, nausea, breathing difficulty, swelling of the throat, and post-vaccine encephalitis.
Yet the World Organisation for Animal Health(WOAH) still recommends vaccinating 70% of dogs worldwide, while also claiming other species spread rabies. That’s not disease prevention — that’s a business plan.
The Natural Hygiene Perspective
The science of Natural Hygiene has no use for germ theory myths. Scientific rigors must be adhered to, and laws of nature must be observed in all claims. Rabies, all of the other so-called infectious diseases, are not a single, contagious entity but a label for various states of body breakdown. The real causes are:
- Toxic injury — from cooked foods, processed foods, toxins, or vaccines themselves.
- Enervation — loss of nerve energy from fear(chronic stress), injury, or chronic poor living habits.
- Malnutrition — starving the body of the materials it needs to function.
- Suggestion and hysteria — the mind triggering the body into crisis through fear and stress.
When we remove the causes, the symptoms vanish. No vaccine required.
The Bottom Line
Rabies is not a lurking killer waiting in an animal’s bite. It’s a manufactured disease that was born from superstition, dressed in Pasteur’s pseudoscience, and kept alive for over a century by fear and profit.
There has never been proof that rabies exists as a specific contagious disease. There has never been proof that a rabies virus has been isolated. What has been proven, over and over, is that the vaccine harms both humans and animals, and that the symptoms attributed to rabies are fully explained by poisoning, malnutrition, abuse, or fear.
Rabies is a ghost story in a lab coat. The only way to end it is to stop believing in it.
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