Booth's Mental health

[Houmes]

(07-31-2015 08:43 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Maddie, the only thing I can think of is something I read in Theodore Roscoe's The Web of Conspiracy. Roscoe wrote, "One day (we are told) a woman spy disguised in widow's weeds, heavily veiled, walked into Lincoln's office and tried to poison him with a kiss. Smallpox. The story may be apocryphal, but the President did, in fact, contract a mild case of varioloid."

Nothing new in the use of smallpox as germ warfare here. Major Robert Donkin, a British Army officer serving in America, wrote a book in 1777 (New York: Military Collections and Remarks) proposing on page 190 that arrows should be dipped in smallpox and shot at the "American rebels" during the Revolutionary War.