Some diseases are infectious even during the incubation period so you could have someone spreading the agent who isn’t yet symptomatic. Early stages of some diseases exhibit flu-like or cold-like symptoms. How much attention gets paid to someone with a runny nose or a cough?

To our knowledge the outbreaks of smallpox among many tribes of Indians have been unintentional through a sick individual who unwittingly came into contact with a tribal member.

1. the smallpox virus is practically indestructable, so it appears. We contain it through immunity, not through destroying it.

2. smallpox got around, naturally. the blanket theory poses a minimal contagion element, at best; but, all it would take is one person. Never mind a dozen blankets.

Fleming mentions a written incident of 1759, in the Somerset village of Chelwood (England). A local sexton was preparing a new grave and accidentally dug into the coffin of a man who had died of smallpox 30 years earlier. A horrid stench emitted, and the attending villagers were all nauseated. In three days, all but two of the people came down with smallpox, and only three survived to tell the story. So says the written account of the story.

It is told in Horace Walpole’s British Traveller, of 1784. I’m sceptical. The British always excelled at “yellow news.” I would research the church records to varify this tale.

Mayor’s article, “The Nessus Shirt” is extraordinary. It helps graps the whole picture.

The myth shouldn’t detract the impact that smallpox has had on the North American population. Like here in southwest Florida, the Spaniards couldn’t defeat the Caloosa nation, but one little microbe did.