The Scratch of Death

December 23rd, 2009

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

cover, Nurse Betsy Crane #13Betsy Crane’s friend and fellow nurse Diane has met and fallen in love with a Jeff, a widower with a young daughter. He saved her from drowning a few weeks before and she has fallen head over heels in love with him.

One day though, Jeff is uncharacteristically brusque to her and Betsy when encountering them on the street. The two nurses head over to Jeff’s house to figure out what is wrong. Jeff is angry that Diane has appeared on his doorstep, but it doesn’t stop him from complaining of a severe headache and eyes that are very sensitive to light. He also suffers a seizure while Diane is pleading with him. Meanwhile, Betsy is talking to Jeff’s young daughter, who mentions that her dog Shag has been hiding from her lately and doesn’t want to play. She also mentions that her father won’t take her swimming anymore because he is afraid of the water. Betsy puts two and two together and realizes that Jeff has rabies, and that he must have gotten from the dog Shag.

Betsy calls her boss Dr. Kiel and he rushes an ambulance out to collect Jeff and admit him to the hospital. He is given daily rabies injections and suffers “sleepless nights and momentary spasms” but “Dr. Kiel and Betsy were always there giving their medical skill and tireless sympathy.” Three weeks later, Jeff is released from the hospital, completely cured, and he and Diane (and Jeff’s daughter and her new dog, Little Shaggy) live happily ever after.

scene from Nurse Betsy Crane #13scene from Nurse Betsy Crane #13scene from Nurse Betsy Crane #13

Even by the low standards of a fifty-year old romance comic, this is a horrible and misleading story medically:

Although this is clearly a story about rabies, the word “rabies” is never used.
allJeff has “hydrophobia” (an older, and now seldom used term), but never “rabies.”
allA wild fox was “rabid” and bit Shag, who became “sick.”
Rabies is not that easily cured.
In the entire history of mankind, only a handful of people have survived rabies without receiving injection therapy, and even then they all suffered from some brain damage, usually quite severe. At this point in time (forty-eight years after the comic was written), the best case scenario utilizes the recently developed “Milwaukee protocol” — but it’s only been used successfully twice.
allYes, Jeff did receive rabies injections, but at that point his rabies was so far along — he’d already developed neurological signs including seizures — it wouldn’t have done much good.
allPlus, Dr Kiel gave the injection wrong. Most of it should be injected near the bite, not in another limb entirely.
allBottom Line: Even if Jeff had somehow managed to survive the rabies (very very unlikely, say about 10,000:1 odds), he would be left with months if not years of intense physical therapy afterward. There is no way he would walk out of the hospital completely cured in three short weeks.
Hydrophobia refers to symptoms in the later stage of rabies that include the fear of drinking water (and other liquids) — because of the paralysis and pain from the disease — not fear of bodies of water.
Check out the cover for a wonderfully sensationalistic stalker-tastic image of a man with rabies hydrophobia.
I’ll give the comic credit for at least acknowledging that rabies is caused by a virus.
Finally, a wonderfully condescending scene that likely led to Jeff’s young daughter being psychologically scarred for life:

scene from Nurse Betsy Crane #13

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6 Responses to “ The Scratch of Death ”

  1. FlowerPower
    December 23rd, 2009 at 7:44 am

    I take it rabies shots for dogs weren’t common in those days? Otherwise this certainly works as a cautionary tale for making sure Fido is always up to date.

  2. Will
    December 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am

    I just recently watched the movie Quarantine, which has some connection to this post. What an odd coincidence.

  3. Charlene
    December 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    “Hydrophobia” was the usual layman’s term for the disease until well into the 1960s, at least in North America. “Rabies” was medical terminology; a mid-century doctor would no more use the word “rabies” to describe the disease to patients than he would use the phase “myocardial infarction” to describe a heart attack.

    When my parents took their cat to be vaccinated for the first time in the late 60s, they didn’t know what the word “rabies” meant, but they were well acquainted with hydrophobia.

  4. Scott
    December 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
    Official Comment

    That’s pretty much what I suspected — but Charlton probably should have updated the terminology in the 1982 reprint I scanned this in from, because by then “hydrophobia” was a forgotten term.

  5. EL
    December 26th, 2009 at 1:07 am

    Surprisingly enough, many people still don’t know that rabies is incurable. Last year for our coursework, we were supposed to write about social conceptions of disease and, as a former veterinarian, I decided to write about rabies. Some of the people in my group did not know that it was incurable.

    As a veterinarian, I had to deal with many people who did not want to vaccinate their dogs or cats or deal with the consequences after they failed to vaccinate and their dog or cat mouthed a dead skunk or bat that turned out to be rabies positive. Needless to say, I got to be extremely persuasive about vaccination, particularly in Arizona where cats don’t have to be vaccinated for rabies (and I saw more bats there than anywhere I’ve ever lived).

    This is a horrible disease and can generally be prevented nowadays.

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