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There are a few countries in the world which
don't have rabies. For some of them, that's

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due to isolation and strong quarantine measures,
the same way being an island nation helped Britain.

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You see, rabies is a particularly nasty disease:
it swells your brain, changes your behaviour,

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makes you paranoid and delirious and in constant
pain, and then it kills you. There's a reason

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that in French, it's known as la rage -- the
rage. Rabies was terrifying in 19th century

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Britain: any bite or scratch from any stray
or wild dog -- and there were a lot of those

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-- could kill you in a horrible way. It almost
certainly wouldn't -- there were actually

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only about twelve hundred UK deaths from rabies
in that whole century, the risk was actually

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really low -- but it terrified Britons.

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So there was what we'd now call a War on Rabies.
Pet dogs had to be muzzled. Wild and stray

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dogs were killed. There was a battle in the
press and in public opinion between dog lovers

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and dog muzzlers. Rabies was a threat blown
out of all proportion -- but those controls

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worked. The last case of rabies caused by
a British animal was in 1922.

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And there is a certain pride in the fact Britain
is free of rabies -- the UK does have a similar

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virus in a few bats, but since unless you're
a professional vet, or Bruce Wayne, the odds

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of a bat bite are near-zero. We count ourselves
as having wiped it out. But even today, you

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will still see scaremongering right-wing tabloid
headlines about new rabies threats, and how

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foreigners could break through our borders
and let it in.

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So at most busy harbours in Britain, you will
still find a sign like this. It's a reminder

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that bringing any animal into Britain on a
private plane or a boat is illegal. Not because

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there's a significant threat of rabies; even
if a rabid dog was smuggled in, the disease

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wouldn't spread particularly far, it wouldn't
cause an epidemic.

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But the reason this sign is there is the same
reason Britain's free of rabies: because it's

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terrifying, because it's still a specter in
the public consciousness, and because being

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free of it, just like being an island nation,
is part of our national identity.

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