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By P. Dileep Kumar
172 pp, $45
Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-3133-4524-1

JAMA. 2009;302(3):331-332.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

It has been 124 years since Louis Pasteur effectively administered a rabies vaccine to a 9-year-old boy, securing the pivotal role for vaccination in the prevention of this serious, nearly always fatal disease. In Biographies of Disease: Rabies, P. Dileep Kumar has provided a treatise that combines historical perspectives with a medical review that makes this text relevant for infectious disease specialists, public health workers, physicians, and laypersons interested in a disease that still terrifies health care professionals and laypersons.

This text will be exciting to readers drawn to the confluence of medicine and history. Medically unsophisticated readers can understand the text because of Kumar's careful explanation of the clinical, microbiological, and immunologic features of rabies as well as his inclusion of a helpful glossary. This keeps the book relevant for those seeking to better understand the effect rabies has and will have on society. Kumar has meticulously reviewed . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Louis Saravolatz, MD, Reviewer
St. John Hospital and Medical Center
Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan
louis.saravolatz@stjohn.org

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