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They didn’t find out what was going on until the 20th century… Before that they thought it was God’s judgment on the heathens or something.
by throwaway894345 5y ago
They didn’t find out what was going on until the 20th century… Before that they thought it was God’s judgment on the heathens or something.
- tomrod 5y agoThey sent blankets used by infected people. They didn't understand germ theory, but they understood contagion.
- 0xBDB 5y agoYou should probably know that there is literally not one fully confirmed case of this ever happening. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qslhq/where_smallpox_blankets_really_a_thing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qslhq/where...
- caethan 5y agoThere's one, at Fort Pitt during the French and Indian war, as documented by multiple letters, as described in your link.
- wwtrv 5y agoDidn’t the first documented cases of this occurs a hundred of more years after most of the natives had already died (18th vs the 16th century)? By the time Europeans started colonizing NA most of locals had already died to the diseases spreading from the south.
- tomrod 5y agoIn my reference, I acknowledge that how I used "they" was ambiguous. I meant people practicing war before germ theory. If we ignore this example, we still have dead and infected bodies/livestock being catapulted into cities.
- throwaway894345 5y agoI acknowledged that much, but my point is they had no idea that these “new people” had no immunity and that the sickness would tear through the population so effectively. Moreover, “they” isn’t “all Europeans”—we need to be careful who we blame or else we verge on racism ourselves.