I can tell you it was a nasty, miserable experience. The stuff is so toxic that when they performed surgery on him to drain the nasty junk out of his neck, they had to do it wearing bio-hazard suits. He was on I.V. antibiotics nonstop and probably had to get a new "stick" once or twice a day (kept jamming up). In the end, it was sixteen days in the hospital - fortunately it was A.I. DuPont Childrens'...an excellent outfit.
It happened in June - the outpatient antibiotics they put him on after being discharged kept him inside, though (couldn't be exposed to sunlight). Crappy summer for the boy. Fortunately for him, he was back into shape and spirit by the start of football season (first week of August) and had a tremendous year.
The infectious diseases doctor actually had to report the case to the Department of Homeland Security - it truly is one of the bio-toxins that could be used by terrorists.
I cannot imagine how the ancients would have fared against this disease given the level of medical expertise they likely had. Dreadful.
It is called "rabbit fever" because rabbits can carry the disease. It was a far more common malady when people used to frequently hunt/eat rabbits - if you cut yourself while skinning the rabbit, you could get sick.
The theory is that he got bit by a tick that had recently bit an infected rabbit. No need to worry, however...the odds are tremendously low of getting it.
Was this the plague that killed two Hittite kings, Suppiluliumas I and his son Arnuwandas III?
Glad your boy made a good recovery. That must have been heartwrenching for your family.
Robert A. Heinlein mentioned in one of his survival-based fiction stories on the importantance of recognizing Tularemia in any rabbits you killed. (Not that you were hunting rabbits that day.) He was talking about how back-to-nature survival wasn't as easy as us modern-day city folk imagined it to be.