Monica Murphy

Some of our culture’s most enduring monsters transmit their contagion through biting — werewolves, zombies, and vampires. Could these myths actually be about rabies?

Some of our culture’s most enduring monsters transmit their contagion through biting — werewolves, zombies, and vampires. Are these myths really about rabies?

What do you do in the face of a monstrous disease with a 100% fatality rate? In this short, a Milwaukee doctor tries to knock death incarnate off its throne.

In the fall of 2004, Jeanna Giese checked into the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin with a set of puzzling symptoms ... 

Rabies is a virus most often transmitted through the bite of an infected animal, and it has been around as long as humans have. Veterinarian Monica Murphy and  journalist Bill Wasik, authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, explain the history, science, and cultural mythology surrounding rabies—and how it has spawned stories of pandemic, werewolves, and zombies.

Long before science explained rabies, the virus showed up in folklore and literature. "The vampire myth, the werewolf myth, and the zombie myth," Bill Wasik tells Kurt Andersen, "are ...