[Phebe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

The claims that smallpox was deliberately used as a genocidal weapon on a massive scale are overblown, but its use as a weapon was not unknown, and it seems indeed to have been used against Native Americans.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...16#post1139316

I have read the British used this tactic more often that we realize, early on. And not just against Indians, perhaps. George Washington was convinced that the British were sending smallpox-infected "visitors" out to his troops around Boston, and he had every man in his army variolated (a less-safe form of vaccination). Martha Washington gave at least one "smallpox party," a social form of infecting each other on the extremities, like a hand, which was safer than catching it the normal way, and immunized people permanently. This was in a book about smallpox I have; I have an amateur's interest in epidemiology.