Polite Dissent

One of the most feared diseases on the American frontier was rabies. While it was rare, death caused by rabies was so agonizing that people would panic just at the thought of contracting it.

Rabies is a viral disease transmitted through the saliva of a bite by an animal infected with rabies. It is 99.999+% fatal (depending on your source, there have been 1-4 survivors ever in human history), but nowadays rabies is preventable with the use of the rabies vaccine and rabies immune globulin.

Untreated, about one-third of people bitten by a rabid animal will develop rabies. Once the person has been infected with rabies, there is an Incubation Period that usually lasts a few days to several weeks. There are no symptoms at this time other than the bite itself. Next comes the Prodromal Stage which lass for 2-10 days. During this stage, many victims develop pain and numbness at the site of the bite. The rest of the symptoms are rather generic (muscle aches, fever, headache). The third stage of rabies is the Acute Neurological Period which lasts another 2-10 days. Some victims become paralyzed (known as “dumb rabies”) while others develop “furious rabies” (hallucinations, delirium, abnormal behavior, frothing at the mouth, hydrophobia). Coma and then death follow, usually within 10 days of the onset of symptoms.

The original rabies vaccine was invented by Louis Pasteur in 1885 but did not become common on the frontier until much later (and 1885 was past Jonah Hex’s time, anyway). Various treatments were common, the most celebrated of which was the “madstone’ — a bezoar — which was worn or rubbed on the bite. It certainly seemed to work at preventing rabies (but remember that two-thirds of bite victims never develop rabies) but had no success once the infection had started.

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So how did the writers of Jonah Hex do?

Rabies is first mentioned in Weird Western Tales #14 when Jonah is tracking down a criminal known as the Butcher*. He hears gunshots ahead and comes across Butcher, lying wounded on the ground with an empty pistol. Next to him is a dead mountain lion.

Butcher: All right. Jonah my gun’s empty, you’ve won! I’m your prisoner! Only that mountain lion chewed up my leg before I could finish him, so you’ve got to get me to a doctor first-
Hex: It’s a four-hour ride back to town, and you’ll be a corpse long before that!
Butcher: W-what’re you talking about? I’m not hurt bad-
Hex:Thet so? Then take a look at the froth ’round thet cat’s mouth whut bit you…He had rabies!

Mountain lions can certainly carry rabies, so the writer got that part correct. Rabies won’t kill him in four hours though, it will take several days before the symptoms start, and then several more days before Butcher will die of rabies — if he’s even in the one-third that gets infected. Of course it is possible that the Butcher’s panic at the thought of rabies — helped by Hex’s words (not to mention his own blood loss) — is enough to speed his death.

Rabies shows up again in the much more recent Jonah Hex #1 where Jonah is hired to find a ten year-old who has been kidnapped. He tracks his quarry to a traveling carnival that earns money by pitting young boys against angry dogs. The boy he is after is comatose and salivating when Hex arrives. He quickly realizes the boy is suffering from rabies and he knows that it is a fatal disease. When the doctor tells him the boy only has onr day to live — and a painful day at that — Hex puts an end to his suffering. The depiction of rabies this time is much better. The time course is more accurate (2-3 weeks between bite and death) and the symptoms match. The ultimate outcome in both cases is the same, because rabies infection in the old West (and even now) was a death sentence.

*This tale “Killers Die Alone” is reprinted in the phonebook-sized Showcase Presents Jonah Hex.

Tags: comics medicine rabies jonah hex