Textiles as Social Texts: Syphilis, Material Culture and Gender in Golden Age Spain

Whereas traditional social and health histories have viewed the garments of early modern patients accessing hospital care as evidence of their poverty, this article reinterprets the meaning of patient clothing in the context of a venereal disease hospital in Toledo, Spain, in the seventeenth century. Patients carefully selected what they wore as they entered the hospital to produce certain effects on local audiences. Thus, these choices can be understood as body scripts meant to be read in certain ways rather than mere reflections of actual social status. In a context of gendered and social pressures associated with women's sexuality, female syphilitic patients wore garments meant to emphasize respectability and thereby avoid a loss of reputation.