Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Without the Germ Theory, I still wonder how the illness infections, and even more, the spread, were accomplished.

Long before Pasteur, people had observed that contact with or proximity to infected people, or objects associated with them, led to contagion. Quarantine was used a thousand years before germ theory! (Farther back than that, WRT leprosy). See also the practice of catapulting the corpses of disease victims into a besieged city, and the infamous if distorted tale of Lord Amherst and his smallpox blankets. (Distorted because it didn't and couldn't work; the smallpox virus can't be transferred that way).