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Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840–1920 by Jessica Wang (review)

Though dogs factor into this story, Wang’s focus is on the human context of rabies itself, and a disease that she follows “wherever it may lead” (p. 227), revealing important developments and conflicts in medicine, law, politics, and everyday life in New York between 1840 and 1920. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on social and cultural history of the urban world of humans and animals in nineteenth-century New York, including an exploration of the ways in which death by rabies (and intense fear of it) emerged amid wider changes in American culture surrounding death. In later chapters, Wang complicates the distinctions between public and private authority by exploring the roles of public health organizations, city departments, and animal welfare organizations.