Mesopotamian codes from before 2,000 B.C. have mentioned about fatal dog bites. The Greek atomist philosopher Democritus from around 420 B.C. traveled across Persia and Egypt wrote about rabies in domestic animals. Aristotle did the same thing a hundred years later. Epizootic of wolf rabies has been known to occur in western Europe in the late 13th century. The first outbreak of dog rabies to leave extensive record happened in Italy in 1708. It did not exist in the Western Hemisphere until dogs caught it in Virginia in 1753.

Louis made the first human vaccination in a nine year old Alsacian boy named Joseph Meister against this disease.

Rabies has been eliminated in many countries through pest control and quarantines. There have been many endemic in various wild animals in Americas and domestic and wild animals throughout Africa and Asia. There is about 30,000 deaths from this disease per year mostly in poor countries. Since 1980, there have only been 20 cases reported in the U.S. of which half were imported. The last non imported human case in California was in 1969 from a bobcat bite.

Dogs actually show two forms of this disease. In what is called "furious rabies" you get the incoherent viciousness that's typical of what people imagine when they think of rabies. "Dumb rabies" results in paralysis.