Talk:History of biological warfare

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Used by the British during the American revolution
"A British officer sent 300 smallpox-infected blankets to the rebel plantations during the Yorktown campaign of 1781, and the British may deliberately have used smallpox as a weapon of war in other instances.38 Apart from Fort Pitt in 1763, however, no other cases of the deliberate use of smallpox against Indians have been recorded." Doug Weller talk 13:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * See discussion at Talk:Biological warfare. Whizz40 (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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Siege of Caffa
In 2011 Valerius Tygart describing the siege of Caffa added "... defending forces retreated, followed by the conquest of the city by the Mongols". The first cited source says "Janibeg renewed the siege in 1345 but was again forced to lift it after a year, this time by an epidemic of plague that devastated his forces." Another source (not a good-looking one) says "Janibeg had no choice but to call off his siege ..." so I'm wondering whether the retreat-and-conquest bit has solid sourcing. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:11, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There was no response so I removed the sentence. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Arrows in the Dirt
"English Longbowmen ... stuck their arrows into the ground in front of them.... the dirt and soil was likely to stick to the arrowheads, thus making the wounds much more likely to become infected." Citation? Was this intentional bio warfare or just happenstance? Before germ theory, how would the archers know this? Would an arrow stuck in the dirt be any dirtier than an arrow carried in a wood/leather quiver and handled with dirty hands? Would a surgeon treating an arrow wound know whether this specific arrow carried germs from the dirt or just germs from everyday life? Did someone write about this practice at the time, or was it something modern scholars came up because it sounds cool? Mooseman2 (talk) 15:30, 18 March 2023 (UTC)