HISTORY 135F

Infectious and Epidemic Disease in History

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
 Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker

Week 4.  Colonies

excerpt from
Treatise against the Serpentine Disease... (c.1510)
by Ruy Diaz de Isla (1462-1542)

It has pleased Divine Justice to give and send us unknown afflictions, never seen or recognized or found in medical books, such as this serpentine disease.  The which turned up and was observed in Spain in the year of Our Lord 1493 in the City of Barcelona, which city was infected and, in consequence, all Europe and the universe in all known and communicable regions.  This disease had its origin and birth once and for all in the island now called Hispaniola [Haiti and the Domincan Republic], as has been determined by wide and infallible experience.

And as this island was discovered by the Admiral Don Cristobal Colón [Christopher Columbus], at that time holding conversation and communication with the people thereof, and as the disease is contagious, it easily laid hold of them and presently was seen in the fleet itself.

And as it was a disease never seen nor known by the Spaniards,  although they felt pains and other effects of the aforesaid malady, they attributed it to the hardships of the sea, or to other causes according to the fancy of each of them....

I call it the Serpentine Disease of the Island of Hispaniola ... because according to its loathsomeness I do not know anything to which I could more naturally compare it than to the serpent.  For as the serpent is abominable, terrifying and horrible, so is this disease abominable, terrifying and horrible.  It is a grave disease that separates and corrupts the flesh and breaks and rots the bones and disrupts and contracts the sinews, and consequently I give it that name.

 
Go to:
  • the writings of an anonymous author in Tlatelolco (1528)
  • the Florentine Codex, or Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (c.1579), created under the supervision of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (c.1499-1590):
    • Physicians, from Book X
    • Ailments of the Body and Medicines Suitable to Use for Their Cure, from Book X
    • The Plague Named Totomonjztli, from Book XII
  • Brief Relation of the Gods and Rites of Heathenism (c. 1629) by Don Pedro Ponce, Beneficiado of the District of Tzumpahuacan
  • Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain (1629) by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón (c.1587-1646)
  • A Briefe and True Reporte of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590) by Thomas Hariot (1560-1621)
  • "June 2001:  And the Moon Be Still as Bright" (1948), in The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1920-  )
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Lecture Notes
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