Mad Dogs and Animal Protectionists: Rabies in Interwar Poland

This article examines the strategies adopted by the Polish Second Republic (1918 to 1939) to control the spread of rabies and focuses particularly on the response of the animal welfare movement to these strategies. Animal protectionists were critical of what they saw as an irrational and inflexible approach to rabies control, one which, they said, treated all dogs—who were the main vectors of rabies transmission—as potentially rabid, and which failed to make distinctions based on dog breed or supposed quality of the dog owner. Examining the content of protectionists’ criticisms tells us about the Polish animal welfare movement as a whole, about its prejudices, priorities, and ambitions. It tells us, too, about class tensions in independent Poland. Protectionists’ analysis of the rabies problem reflected their own urban middle-class milieu and was in keeping with their general desire as animal welfare advocates to reform, enlighten, and civilize certain kinds of people. Looking at rabies in interwar Poland encourages us, moreover, to reconsider the lines that separate human from non-human animals and to interrogate the role that humans play in zoonotic disease transmission. © 2013, Taylor and Francis Ltd. All rights reserved.