Re: New world populations

Paul J. Gans (gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu)
21 Dec 1994 22:06:19 GMT

MBAWilliam (mbawilliam@aol.com) wrote:

[deletions]

: I haven't heard of TB invested blankets, but Europeans were proud enough
: of their endeavors with smallpox infested blankets to document it quite
: often. In addition, they obviously knew of the insidious effect of such
: diseases, as I recall Mourt (1622) brags, they motivated their indigenous
: neighbors by claiming to keep the *plague* chained up in a cellar, to
: unleash at their will.... Whose to say that they didn't do as they
: threatened? Granted, encircling and burning pallisaded villages such as
: Fort Mistick, making sure to shoot any escapees of course, was just as
: effective as a few well placed blankets...

I'd like to know more about how one can "keep the *plague* chained up
in a cellar,..." since, with the exception of the pneumonic form
of the plague it is not human-human contagious. And the pneumonic
form is *very quickly* fatal, with time to death measured in hours.

------ Paul J. Gans [gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]