1. The history of rabies from antiquity to the present day has recently been published in meticulous detail by Dr. Théodoridès: J. Théodoridès, Histoire de la Rage, Paris, Masson, 1986. Professor Campbell (personal communication) has pointed to the possible significance of the translator’s change of “If a dog is mad” to read “If a dog is vicious” between the Princeton editions of 1950 and 1958 of the Eshnunna Code. It may also be noted that the paragraph concerning mad, or vicious, dogs, follows directly upon one concerning oxen “known to gore habitually”, and that the fine for a fatal outcome is the same in both cases.
2. Aristotle, Historia Animalium, vol. IV, book VIII, 604a.
3. Celsus, De Medicina, with an English translation by W.G. Spencer, London, Heinemann, 1938. The present author has discussed different interpretations of Aristotle’s meaning, and the semasiology of “virus”, in more detail in an earlier paper,
4. L. Wilkinson, “Rabies - two millennia of ideas and conjecture on the aetiology of a virus disease”, Med. Hist. 21: 15–31, 1977; and in A.P. Waterson and L. Wilkinson, An Introduction to the History of Virology, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
5. Pliny, Natural History book 8, LXIII: 152–153; book 29, XXXII: 98–102.