Blankets

[Sojourner]

At 10:34 AM 6/9/97 -0700, David Casseres wrote:
>Tom STanton sez
>>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?
>
>I'm pretty sure the idea of contagion via physical contact -- including 
>contact with infected clothes, etc. -- was already fairly well accepted, 
>even though germs were unknown.  I know the concept of "contagious 
>particles" was around long before Pasteur.
>
>
>Cheers,
>David
>
>

folks (not FOAX), let's just give this whole blanket thing a rest.  Nobody
knows what happened, but we all know smallpox killed a lot of NA's and that
perhaps someone gave some NA's some smallpox-infected blankets along the
way.  My personal GUESS is that some low-ranking soldiers (compare with any
low-ranking soldiers you know today) were told to go give a bunch of
blankets to NA's as per some order from officers (treaty obligs whatever)
and thought they'd be hilariously cruel and throw in a bunch of old raggedy
blankets from dead soldiers as well.

If low-ranking soldiers are good for one thing, it's following orders in
the easiest, stupidest manner possible, all while smiling sweetly and
saying, "Who, me?"