Rabies is a very old disease, perhaps as old as humankind. The word rabies has its origin in Sanskrit, 3000 years BC: "rabhas" means "to do violence".
The Greek word for rabies,"lyssa" derives from the root "lud" which means "violent".
The first description of the disease dates from the 23rd. century BC in the Eshuma Code of Babylon. Antiquity, did know rabies as well as the link between human disease and animals, especially dogs. But, it is a famous Italian scholar, Girolamo Fracastoro, born in Verona, who described the disease, which obviously he had seen in many patients, and its routes of contamination in 1530, i.e. 350 years before Louis Pasteur.
In the 19th. century, canine or street rabies was a scourge everywhere, especially in Europe. Fear of rabies, related to the mode of contamination, the absence of any efficacious treatment, was almost irrational.
Patients killed themselves or were killed when bitten by a dog believed to be rabid. In this world of irrational terror the first post-exposure treatment in 1885 gave Louis Pasteur an international aura that his previous major scientific works had not been able to provide. 

With the exception of Antartica and Australia, animal rabies is present in all continents. As for human infection, the World Health Organization(WHO) attributed more than 36,000 deaths to rabies in 1992. However, in France, there has been no reported case of human rabies since 1924, and the number of animal cases have significantly decreased after the onset of oral vaccination of foxes.
Only few departments are still infected.

The principal vector and reservoir of rabies throughout the world is the dog. Click here to see an animation sequence. It has also been noted that wild infected animals can either directly infect humans, or indirectly by infection of domestic animals. Moreover, different wildlife vectors of rabies virus may co-exist, as in North America. In Latin America, the principal vector of rabies virus is the dog. However, the vampire bat is often at the origin of the disease. The insectivore bat can also be a vector for rabies.

Taxonomically, rabies viruses belong to the Rhabdoviridae family , Lyssavirus genus . Rabies isolates are, either termed street rabies or wildlife rabies, or fixed virus for laboratory adapted rabies virus strains. The virus morphology, under electron microscopy, is a bullet-shaped cylinder. The virus consists of a phospholipid bilayer, a helicoidal RNA, and five proteins. Viral replication occurs within the cellular cytoplasm of host cells.

The primary mode of transmission is through the bite of an infected animal, and to a lesser extent, scratching and licking can also transmit the disease. There are also some cases in which transmission occurred via viral aerosols and cornea transplants. Transport of the virus occurs through the neuronal pathway, from the site of virus entry into the organism, into the brain which is the preferential site of virus replication. Subsequently, the virus is transported through the nerves, to various peripheral organs.

Once the rabies virus is present in the nervous system and provokes encephalitis in mammals, the disease always have a lethal outcome. Although, in infected animals, the final outcome usually is death if not treated, the primary symptoms of a rabies infection can be in the form of either a paralytic form, observed mainly in the rodents , or a furious form, which is usually observed in carnivores. Moreover, both of these clinical manifestations have been reported in human rabies.

The treatment of human patients against rabies is of the uttermost importance, and the basis of treatment is vaccination. The first antirabies treatment was discovered by L. Pasteur in 1885, when he used the spinal cord of an infected rabbit. Consequently, vaccines prepared with cerebral tissues underwent numerous improvements. Contemporary vaccines prepared in cell cultures proved to be efficient. The protocol of treatment varies, pending on the type of vaccine utilized. Serotherapy can be associated in the rabies vaccination. Vaccination before exposure is useful for allowing a rapid response by the organism in any subsequent exposure to the virus. There is yet no known efficient treatment of confirmed rabies.

Rabies prophylaxis of canine rabies consists in control of the stray dogs, and by protective vaccination of dogs. Test are currently in progress to evaluate the efficacy of antirabies vaccination by way of oral administration. Beside the dog population, cats are also considered to be an important vector. In rabies-free countries, a quarantine is usually enforced.

The elimination of wild animals, which are either vectors or reservoirs, is difficult. In many developing countries, wild animals are rarely accessible, and in the industrial countries, the wildlife is usually under government protection. A campaign, which began a few years ago, was initiated in order to reduce rabies in the fox population via oral vaccination in Western Europe. Since the commencement of this campaign, there has been a significant reduction in the number of rabies cases in Western Europe. In Latin America where the vampire bat is an important virus vector responsible for the loss of cattle. The only response to this loss has been the utilization of vampiricides products.

The diagnosis techniques for rabies allows the unequivocal identification of viral presence in infected tissue samples. It, also, permits an epidemiological surveillance of either the canine or wildlife populations.