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Pasteur actually put an identification on what we now call an etiological agent, but theories of contagion exist in medicine back well beyond Galen to ancient Egypt and Sumeria. (Just finished a book on the latter which was amusing in a dark sort of way - translations of certain cuneiform medical texts contain two columns: on the left, the symptoms, on the right, the prognosis. "He will die" seems to be very popular on the right side.)

There are numerous references to the launching of dead (I hope!) plague victims into besieged cities from the time of Justinian through the Renaissance, which turned out to be a pretty effective tactic. So I wouldn't put an attempt to spread disease by blankets beyond the conception of these folks, but I would challenge that it worked.

I have to go with sarasmom here on two accounts - first, that we're attempting to judge 17th-century people by 21st-century moral codes, and second, while we try to do better our actual success in that regard is spotty at best. Would the various tribes have nuked Jamestown or Boonesborough if they could in order to settle a nasty, genocidal war? Would the settlers have nuked Indian villages for the same purpose? It's only hypothetical, but based on the real actions of both parties, I'd have to suggest that they would have. Would we nuke a city to settle a nasty, genocidal war? Two? Hmm...

it DID work.

the Mandans were wiped out as a result of typhus & TB infected blankets, intentionally given to them by the whites.

while the "germ theory" was discoved about 1820, the ancient egyptians & phoenicians actively used germ warfare.

also the Jesuits invented SCALPING!

it was a way to "prove you had killed an Indian" and thus you could receive your bounty/blood money.the earliest records of payments for scalps was about 1540.

free dixie,sw

So I wouldn't put an attempt to spread disease by blankets beyond the conception of these folks, but I would challenge that it worked.

I don't think this is sufficient to reject the null.

There were, indeed, theories of causation prior to Pasteur.

As their names indicate, "influenza" was caused by the stars, and "malaria" by the "bad air" coming off swamps.

Bubonic plague was particularly baffling because contact with persons who had died from the disease -- such as being mistakenly thrown in a "plague pit" after passing out from too much drink -- was mysteriously non-infecting (probably because the infected fleas had left the cooling bodies) whereas parading through the town amid a throng of the healthy was highly infectious.

I take your major point, however, and believe it is close to mine -- we project our knowledge, attitudes etc. into the past at our own intellectual peril.