Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
chasing beautiful, infectious prostitutes into the
French army camp” during the Naples Campaign
of 1494 [2].
The
Arthashastra
, written in India during the
fourth century BC by Kautilya, provides recipes
for transmitting infectious disease to enemies [3].
Among the greatest scourges of the ancient world
were those diseases of bioterrorism that are feared
today for their ability to be transmitted from
person-to-person. The Roman historian, Cassius
Dio, reported plagues begun by saboteurs in
Rome in 90-91 AD, and again in 189 AD. He
described deliberate attempts to use smallpox and
bubonic plague against enemy troops and cities,
in what Roman historians decried as “man-made
pestilence” [2].
The spread of plague and its causative agent
Pasteurella pestis
was not well understood in 1346.
However, during the fourteenth-century siege of
Caffa (now Feodossia, Ukraine), the attacking
Tartar force experienced a plague epidemic [4].
The Tatars, led by the Muslim commander De
Mussis, attempted to convert their misfortune into a
battlefield opportunity by catapulting the cadavers
of their deceased into the city in hopes of initi-
ating a plague epidemic. The outbreak of plague
in Caffa was soon followed by the retreat of its
defending forces and conquest of the city. Since
plague-transmitting fleas leave cadavers to para-
sitize a living host, the corpses catapulted over
the walls of Caffa may not have been carrying
competent plague vectors [4]. The siege of this city
likely had only minimal importance in the spread
of plague through Europe [5].
Medieval military commanders paid attention
to the “lessons learned” from the siege of Caffa.
In 1422, during the Hussite wars in Bohemia,
at the siege of Karlstejn (located in the current
Czech republic), the invading forces led by Prince
Zygmunt Korybutovic (Coribut), hurled corpses of
plague-stricken soldiers, dead cows and 2000 cart-
loads of excrement at the enemy troops [6,7].
In 1650, Polish General Jan Kazimierz
Siemienowicz, an expert in artillery and rock-
etry, fired hollow artillery spheres filled with
the saliva from rabid dogs at enemy forces. It
is unknown whether General Siemienowicz was
successful with this tactical use of animal saliva,
but he was prescient in his understanding of the
causative agent of rabies. Although rabies trans-
mission results from virus inoculation through the
bite of a rabid animal, this was not proven until
the early eighteenth century [8].
Smallpox devastated Native Americans in
the eighteenth century [9]. Francisco Pizarro's
conquest of the Inca empire in South America
during the fifteenth century had been aided by
the Inca's susceptibility to the virus. Specula-
tion has been raised that he had made gifts of
smallpox-contaminated cloth to the Incas [10].
Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces
in North America during the French and Indian
War (1754-1767), may have known those rumors.
Amherst recommended the deliberate use of
smallpox to “reduce” Native American tribes
hostile to the British. An outbreak of smallpox
at Fort Pitt resulted in the generation of fomites
(an inanimate object contaminated with infectious
microorganisms that can serve in disease trans-
mission) and an opportunity to execute Amherst's
plan [11]. On June 24, 1763, Captain Simeon
Ecuyer, one of Amherst's subordinates, gave blan-
kets and a handkerchief from the smallpox hospital
to the Native Americans and recorded in his
journal, “I hope it will have the desired effect” [4].
Shortly afterwards, Native Americans defending
Fort Carillon sustained epidemic smallpox casu-
alties, which directly contributed to the loss
of the Fort
to the English,
later renamed Fort
Ticonderoga [12].
During the Revolutionary War, General George
Washington ordered variolation (an early form of
smallpox immunization) for the Continental Army
in 1777 after the loss of the siege of Quebec.
Washington's order was given because of the
devastation already rendered on his forces by
smallpox, and also to decrease the potential for
purposeful spread of smallpox among the Colonials
by the British [9].
Perhaps taking a lead from the battle plans of
the fourteenth century Tartars, Tunisians in 1785
threw plague-infected clothing into the Christian-
held city of La Calle, in hopes of spreading this
illness [13]. During 1796-1797, while besieging
