Treating Chemical and Biological Agent Casualties

Lesson 4: Biological Agents

4-2. DISEASE IN WARFARE

Disease has played a very important part in warfare. In most wars, more soldiers died from disease than were killed by enemy action. Usually, these deaths resulted from inadequate sanitation and lack of personal hygiene, not from deliberate enemy planning. There have been a few cases reported in which disease was spread as a military tactic. Dead animals left in water wells and diseased human corpses thrown into a city under siege are two methods in which biological warfare has been conducted in the past. Some reports indicate that Indians in North and South America were given blankets contaminated by smallpox victims in order to spread the disease among local populations. Some reports indicate that biological weapons may have been used in modern wars.