Print this page. Home / Browse / Type / Thing / Rabies Rabies, a
viral disease that attacks the body’s central nervous system,
causes convulsions, hallucinations, and an inability to swallow
liquid—hence its earlier name, hydrophobia, or “fear of water.”
Until Frenchman Louis Pasteur’s 1885 creation of a vaccine that
successfully treated rabies in humans, the bite from a rabid
animal almost always resulted in a death excruciating to endure
and horrifying to witness. Pasteur’s discovery was publicized in
Arkansas, but it would be almost thirty years before the state
had a treatment center using his methods, though it lasted only
briefly. Two months after Pasteur’s breakthrough, four New
Jersey children who had been bitten by a rabid dog traveled to
France and were cured using the vaccine. News of these boys’
recovery was published nationwide, including in the Arkansas
Gazette, and within a few years, even small town newspapers
publicized the treatment. The first two Pasteur Institutes in
the United States were