Governments, quarantine, and consent

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   The court of Japan, 735–737

   1. 5 minutes: Pose the unit question: When may authorities restrict people to stop a disease? Explain that all three sources in this unit show governments facing an epidemic, and that none of them knew what caused it.
   2. 10 minutes: Read the History tab of The Great Epidemic of 735–737. Its intensity is Medium: a steady list of deaths and one order to bury the rotting dead, nothing graphic.
   3. 20 minutes: Build the timeline from the source's teacher notes. Split entries 1 to 27 among groups; each marks its entries as a religious response, practical relief, an amnesty, a death or a report, and adds them to a strip on the wall.
   4. 10 minutes: Read the emperor's words in entries 10 and 25. Ask why a ruler might blame his own lack of virtue, and which of his orders restrict people: wine forbidden and the slaughter of animals stopped (10), killing forbidden on fast days (23).

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   An order for the provinces

   1. 10 minutes: Read the History tab of How to Care for the Sick in the Epidemic of 737 and passage 1, the description of the disease. Its intensity is Low: symptoms described plainly, nothing graphic.
   2. 10 minutes: Pairs read articles 2 to 7 and sort them into rules about food, rules about the body and bedding, and rules about medicine. They mark which rules forbid something and which offer help.
   3. 15 minutes: Groups act as a governor's staff who have just received the order (passage 8). They write a short notice to be read aloud in a village, and list what the province must supply so that poor families can follow it.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss the source's questions. The order never mentions keeping the sick apart from the healthy; ask what that suggests about how its writers understood the disease, and what an order can't tell us about what was actually done.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Pericles and the Assembly

   1. 5 minutes: Today's reading from The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians is Pericles's speech, which describes no sick people. The source as a whole is High intensity, so tell students that the earlier passages on the page describe symptoms and unburied bodies, and that they need not read them.
   2. 10 minutes: Read 2.59.1–2.61.2 together. Ask what Pericles says a citizen owes the city (2.60.2–2.60.4), and remind students from the History tab that Thucydides wrote the speech in his own words.
   3. 15 minutes: Hold a short version of the source's Assembly. Half the class argues for sending envoys to Sparta, half defends Pericles, using only the excerpt. Vote, then read 2.65.1–2.65.4 to see what the Athenians did.
   4. 15 minutes: Students answer the unit question in a paragraph, using at least two of the three sources: When may authorities restrict people to stop a disease? They say where each government ordered, helped or persuaded, and whether the people had a say.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians

   Thucydides, 430–400 BCE. Moderate.

   Plain language; Pericles's argument needs context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   oracle

   a shrine where a god was believed to answer questions, or the answer given there

   contagion

   the spread of disease from person to person

   pyre

   a pile of wood for burning a dead body

   Assembly

   the meeting of Athenian citizens that made the city's decisions

   general

   one of ten elected officials who led the Athenian armies and much of the city's politics

   envoy

   a messenger sent to bargain with another state

   tyranny

   rule by one person who took power without a legal right

   humors

   the body fluids (later fixed as four, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) that doctors believed had to stay in balance

   1. Comprehension Trace the course of the disease in one sufferer, from the first signs to death or recovery. What happened to many who survived?
   2. Analysis Thucydides says people stopped fearing the gods and the law. What reasons does he give, and do they follow from what he has described?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Thucydides says he had the disease himself. How does that make his account stronger, and what might a survivor leave out? He also says he wrote the speeches in his own words, keeping as close as he could to the general sense of what was said. How should that change the way we read Pericles's defense?
   4. Connection Procopius, in The Plague at Constantinople, modeled his account on this one. Compare how the two writers describe what happened to burial customs, and what each says about the gods.

   Activity Hold the Athenian Assembly of 430 BCE. Half the class argues for sending envoys to make peace with Sparta; half defends Pericles's policy. Each side may use only evidence from the text. Vote, then read 2.65 to compare with what the Athenians actually did.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   The Great Epidemic of 735–737

   Shoku Nihongi, 735–797. Moderate.

   Plain sentences, but many names and offices; the notes on kami and the ruler's virtue carry the context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   epidemic

   an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly through many people at once

   kami

   the gods and spirits of Japanese tradition, worshiped at shrines

   sutra

   a Buddhist scripture, often read aloud for protection or blessing

   edict

   a formal order or announcement from a ruler

   amnesty

   a pardon granted to many prisoners at once

   relief

   food, goods, or money given by a government to people in need

   court rank

   an official's place in the order of the court, which decided pay and privileges

   virtue

   moral goodness; here, the goodness a ruler was expected to show, believed to keep the realm in order

   1. Comprehension List the things the court did in response to the epidemic between 735 and 737. Which were religious, which were practical, and which fit neither group?
   2. Analysis In his edicts of the fifth and eighth months of 737, the emperor says that his own lack of virtue brought the disaster. Why might a ruler say this, and what did he do in response?
   3. Analysis (reliability) These records were kept by government officials and edited into a history sixty years later. Whose experiences do they record in detail, and whose do they leave out? What can and can't they tell us about how ordinary people suffered?
   4. Connection Read The Government Explains the Flu, 1918, a U.S. Public Health Service pamphlet. Compare what each government believed it could do against an epidemic and whom each expected to act.

   Activity Students build a timeline of the entries from 735 to 737 on a long strip of paper, marking each entry as a religious response, practical relief, an amnesty, a death, or a report. In small groups they then write a short memo as officials in the eighth month of 737, advising the emperor what to do next and pointing to the record so far as their evidence.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   How to Care for the Sick in the Epidemic of 737

   Council of State, 737. Moderate.

   Short numbered articles in plain language; a few foods and medical words are glossed in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   epidemic

   an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly through many people at once

   Council of State

   the highest office of the Japanese government under the emperor

   province

   one of the regions into which the country was divided, each run by a governor sent from the capital

   relief

   food, goods, or money given by a government to people in need

   relapse

   falling ill again after seeming to recover

   dysentery

   severe diarrhea with blood or mucus

   1. Comprehension Sort the seven articles into rules about food, rules about the body and bedding, and rules about medicine. Which instructions forbid something, and which offer help?
   2. Analysis The order never mentions keeping the sick away from the healthy. What does that suggest about how its writers understood the disease?
   3. Analysis (reliability) This order tells us what the government wanted done. What can't it tell us about how the sick were actually cared for? What other evidence would you want?
   4. Connection Read the Shoku Nihongi entries in The Great Epidemic of 735–737. The same government made offerings to the kami and ordered sutra readings. How do those responses fit with this order's practical advice?

   Activity In small groups, students act as a provincial governor's staff who have just received the order. They write a short notice, in plain words, to be read aloud in a village, and list what the province must supply so that poor families can follow it.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: When may authorities restrict people to stop a disease? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students debate in the Athenian Assembly and advise the Nara court from the texts, timeline official acts, and ask whose experience the records leave out.

Go further

Other units

Who gets blamed? · The healer's burden · Explaining disease before germs · Faith and catastrophe · After the plague · Case study: smallpox · Reading sources critically

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Smallpox, from inoculation to eradication

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