British biological warfare

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7409.261

BMJ 2003;327:261 (2 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7409.261

Filler

British biological warfare

In 1763 Sir Jeffrey Amhurst, commander in chief of the Britishforces fighting a North American Indian uprising west of theAllegheny mountains, wrote to Colonel Bouquet: "Could it notbe contrived to send the Smallpox among those disaffected tribesof Indians?"

Bouquet replied: "I shall try and inoculate them with some blankets, and take care not to get the disease myself. As it is a pityto expose good men against them, I wish we could use the Spanishmethod, to hunt them with English dogs who would, I think,effectively extirpate or remove that vermin."

Amhurst answered: "You will do well to try to inoculate theIndians by means of blankets as well as to try every othermethod that can serve to extirpate this exorable race."

Captain Simeon Ecuyer, commandant of Fort Pitt, noted in hisjournal on 24 June: "Out of regard for them [two Indian chiefs]we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the Smallpoxhospital. I hope it will have the required effect."

However, in 1803 President Jefferson encouraged the Indiansto be vaccinated so "that they would not only be secured byit from the smallpox but that it would finally extirpate thatdisease from the earth."

Jeremy Hugh Baron, honorary professorial lecturer

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA

Further reading

Parkman F. The conspiracy of Pontiac. Vol 2. Boston: Little Brown, 1910: 44.

Stearn EW, Stearn AE. The effect of smallpox on the destiny of the Amerindian. Boston: B Humphries, 1945: 44-45, 56-57.

Sipe CH. The Indian wars of Pennsylvania. 2nd ed. Lewisberg, PA: Wennawoods, 1995: 423-4.