DBQ: DISEASES AND WORLD HISTORY
DIRECTIONS
The following question is based on the accompanying documents. (The documents have
been edited for the purpose of this exercise). The question is designed to test your ability to
work with and understand historical documents. Write an essay that:

Has relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents.

Uses all or all but one of the documents.

Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible and
does not simply summarize the documents individually.

Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the authors’ points of view.
ESSAY PROMPT
Analyze beliefs about and responses to the Bubonic Plague from 300 to 1750 CE.
What types of additional documentation would help access ideas and responses to the Black
Death?
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
During the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the first recorded incidences of Bubonic Plague
spread from East Africa throughout the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean,
devastating the population of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Sasanid
Empires. During the same age, East Asian records describe similar incidents, which to most
modern doctors were also the Bubonic Plague or Black Death. Outbreaks eventually
subsided in the 8th century but reappeared in China in the 13th century. Due to Mongol
armies and couriers, the disease spread across the Eurasian steppe to Russia, the coastal
cities of the Mediterranean, and the neighboring lands of Europe, the Middle East and
North Africa. It continued to reappear over the course of the next four hundred years and
was eventually spread by the European explorers to the New World and its inhabitants.
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DOCUMENT 1
Al-Razi, Persian doctor, head of the largest hospital in Baghdad, author of the most
widely studied Medieval Muslim 25-volume compendium of medical and surgical
knowledge and author of A Treatise on Smallpox and Measles, c. 900 CE
"The eruption of smallpox is preceded by a continued fever, pain in the back, itching
in the nose and nightmares during sleep. A swelling of the face appears, which comes
and goes, and one notices an overall inflammatory color noticeable as a strong
redness on both cheeks and around both eyes. One experiences a heaviness of the
whole body and great restlessness, which expresses itself as a lot of stretching and
yawning. There is a pain in the throat and chest and one finds it difficult to breathe
and cough. Additional symptoms are dryness of breath, thick spittle, hoarseness of
the voice, pain and heaviness of the head, restlessness, nausea and anxiety. Altogether
one experiences heat over the whole body, one has an inflamed colon and one shows
an overall shining redness, with a very pronounced redness of the gums. Smallpox
appears when blood 'boils' and is infected, resulting in puss being expelled. Thus
juvenile blood (which looks like wet extracts appearing on the skin) is being
transformed into richer blood, having the color of mature wine. At this stage,
smallpox shows up essentially as blisters ... this disease can also occur at other times.
The best thing to do during this first stage is to keep away from it; otherwise this
disease might turn into an epidemic."
DOCUMENT 2
Ho Kung, Chinese doctor, 281 – 361 CE, from his observations recorded in his book
“The people say that in the fourth year of Yung-hui, this pox spread from west to
east and spread into the seas. If the people boiled edible mallows, mixed them with
garlic and ate the concoction, the epidemic would stop. If when first contracting the
disease one ate the concoction with a small amount of rice to help it down, this too
would effect a cure. Because the epidemic was introduced in the time of the emperor
Chien-wu (c. 317 CE), when Chinese armies attacked the barbarians at Nan-yang, it
was given the name of the ‘Barbarian pox.’”
DOCUMENT 3
The Medical Faculty of Paris, report in 1350 CE to the City Magistrates
“It is especially to be observed that the well be put at a distance from all ill-smelling
infected persons; for the sick of this sort are contagious. For the corrupted and
poisoned air, breathed out by these sick, infects those present. That is why all or
most people in the same house die, and especially those related to the sick, or
connected with them.”
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DOCUMENT 4
Entries recorded in the Nihongi, The Chronicles of Japan, from the reign of the
Emperor Bidatsu, c. 585 C.E.
“Mononobe and Nakatomi addressed the emperor saying ‘Why have you not
consented to follow your servants’ counsel? Is not the persistence of the pestilence
from the reign of the late emperor thy father, which has put the nation in danger of
extinction, due absolutely to the establishment of the exercise of the Buddhist
religion by the Lord Soga?’ The Emperor gave command saying ‘ Manifestly so: let
Buddhism be discontinued.’
Mononobe cut down the pagoda, which he then set fire to and burnt. He likewise
burnt the image of Buddha and the Temple of Buddha. Just at this time the emperor
was suddenly afflicted with sores. Again the land was filled with those who were
attacked with sores and died thereof. Old and young said privately to one another,
‘Is this a punishment for burning of the image of Buddha.’”
DOCUMENT 5
John of Ephesus, Byzantine Bishop and court historian, describing the epidemic of
541 – 543 CE
“Whole peoples and kingdoms, territories, regions and powerful cities were seized by
the plague. Thus when I, a wretch, wanted to include these matters in a record of
history, my thoughts were seized several times by stupor, and for many reasons I
planned to omit it, because what use would it be when the entire world was tottering
and reaching its dissolution and the length of generations was cut short? But then I
thought that it was right that we should inform our successors and transmit to them
a least a little from among the multitude of matters concerning God’s chastisement
of us. Perhaps during the remainder of world history which will come after us, they
will fear and shake because of the terrible scourge with which we were lashed
through our transgressions and become wiser through the chastisement of us
wretches and be saved from God’s wrath here in this world and from future
torment.”
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DOCUMENT 6
Ibn Battuta, Moroccan Muslim gadi (jurist) and traveler, from his Risla or Journal
of Travels, 1348
“I witnessed at the time of the great plague in Damascus a remarkable instance.
Argun-Shah, king of the emirs and the Sultan’s viceroy, ordered a crier to proclaim
throughout Damascus that the people should fast for three days and that no one
should cook meat in the bazaar during the daytime. At the end of the this period,
the emirs, sharifs, gadis, doctors of the Law, and all other classes of the people
assembled in the Grand Mosque and spent the night there in prayers and liturgies
and supplications. Then after performing the morning prayer, they all went out
together on foot carrying Qurans in their hands. The entire population of the city
joined in the exodus; the Jews went out with their book of the Law and the
Christians with their Gospel, imploring the favor God through his Books and his
Prophets. God most high lightened their affliction; the numbers of deaths in a single
day reached a maximum of 2,000 whereas the number rose in Cairo and Old Cairo
to 24,000 a day.”
DOCUMENT 7
Dr. Richard Mead, Professor at Oxford and a Fellow of the English College of
Surgeons, from his Discourse on the Plague, 1721
“Instead of ignorant old women, who are appointed searchers in parishes to enquire
what diseases people die of, that office (council of health) should be committed to
understanding and diligent men, whose business it should be, as soon as they find
any who have died after an uncommon manner particularly with livid spots, to give
notice thereof to the magistrates; who should immediately send skillful physicians to
visit the houses of the neighborhood, especially of the poorer sort, among whom this
evil generally begins; and if a pestilential distemper has broken out among the
inhabitants, they should without delay order all the families, in which the sickness
is to be removed; the sick to different places from the healthy; but the houses for
both should be three or four miles out of town, and the healthy people should be
stripped of all their clothes, and washed and shaved, before they go into their new
lodgings.”
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DOCUMENT 8
The Annals of the Cakchiquels and Title of the Lords of Totonicapan, recording the
outbreak of plague or smallpox amongst the Mayans upon the arrival of the
Spanish, mid-16th century CE, Yucatan, Mexico
“Great was the stench of death. After our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, half
the people fled to t he fields. The dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. The
mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died and with them died the son of the
king and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh, my sons!
So we became when we were young. All of us were thus. We were born to die.”
DOCUMENT 9
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire, from her extensive travels and observations, c. 1740 CE
“The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the
invention of engrafting (vaccinations), which is the term they give it. There is a set of
old women, who make it their business to perform the operation. The old woman
comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what
vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with
a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into
the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and binds up the little
wound. The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are
in perfect health to the eighth. Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep
their beds two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty
pockmarks on their faces, which never mark, and in eight days time they are as well
as before their illness. There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you
may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it
on my dear little son.”
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FOOTNOTES
1. “Al-Razi” from Wikipedia [Database on Line] (Accessed March 17, 2007). Available at
http://www.bookrags.com/Al-Razi#bro_copy.
2. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books,
1976), 118.
3. Charles Edward Armory Winslow, The Conquest of Epidemic Disease: A Chapter in the
History of Ideas. (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1943, 1971),
100.
4. W. G. Aston, trans., Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to AD 697.
(Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972), 102 – 104 in passim.
5. David Keys, Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World. (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 13.
6. Bernard Lewis, A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters, and History. (New
York: Random House, 2000), 92 – 93.
7. Winslow, Conquest, 191.
8. William H. McNeill, Plagues 190 – 191.
9. From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley
Montague: Written During her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa. . . , vol. 1 (Aix,
France: Anthony Henricy, 1796), pp. 167-69; letter 36, to Mrs. S. C. from Adrianople,
n.d.
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