A British (not American) officer suggested the smallpox blanket idea in a letter to another officer. There is no record of it ever being carried out.
BTW, Ebola is such a tremendously virulent disease that outbreaks tend to “burn themselves out.” It kills so efficiently that it prevents itself from spreading farther.
It burns it self out because it usually originate in remote areas and it kills faster then people can walk out.
This outbreak is in semi-populates areas with transportation available.
The reason it’s “burned itself out” in the past was it struck in remote villages. It’s a different story in big cities with high mobility, and that’s the problem...