> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of P. J. Alling > Sent: 11 January 2007 01:35 > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: PESO - American Fence > > This is well, just wrong. The methods of how diseases were > transmitted > just wasn't well enough understood to run a campaign using such a > weapon. You didn't need to do it on purpose, it seems that > moderns have > forgotten just virulent smallpox is and what it does to un-protected
> populations. Now killing the buffalo, that was well understood. > People have been using diseases as biological weapons as far back as you care to go in history. At least since the plague of Athens and the siege of Caffa, when the bodies of plague victims were thrown over the walls to infect the enemy. Some people think that the ashes that God told Moses to sprinkle on Pharaoh (Exodus 9:8-9) is an example of anthrax used as a weapon. After the initial wave of the Black Death in the 14th century it chuntered on through Europe for 300 years. One of the reasons why it didn't continue to have the devastating consequences it did in the 14th century is that people fairly quickly came to understand the pattern of transmission, so they were able to take countermeasures whenever there was a new outbreak. By the time we arrived in the New World we had used germ warfare many times before, and certainly new enough about it to use it against the people in North America. There are several examples of it cited, including Sir Jeffrey Amherst deliberately giving tribal leaders blankets laced with smallpox crusts at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania in 1763. http://www.college.ucla.edu/webproject/micro12/webpages/indianssmallpo x.html -- Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
