Infection (No, not AIDS)

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Tom wonders:
"I thought I'd stay out too, but what the hell--vis the infected blanket,
unless I'm way off, at the time no one had discovered how diseases
were communicated in a population. If the Army was trying a primitive
form of germ warfare they would've been flying blind. Or is my time-
line way off?"


Even if germ theory had not been advanced and accepted, it has long been
known that at least some kind of exposure to those with a disease and to
the things they have worn, lived with, etc. could spread the disease as
well.  But that in turn led to overreactions as well.  Consider the
quarantining and/or shunning of lepers for thousands of years, the burning
of bodies and aritifacts of plague victims during the Middle Ages, or
even stories from ancient Greece about atrocities like tying people to
the bodies of the dead as punishment.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)