Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WomenAndTheBaths (Women and the Baths: Ancient Medicine, Pleasure, and The Female Body in Renaissance Italy)
Reporting period: 2024-05-15 to 2026-05-14
Despite the growing interest in women’s agency during the European Renaissance, research has disproportionately focused on their roles as patrons, purchasers, and creators of art. Women’s contribution to one of the most widespread medical practices of the time, bathing, has been neglected. Despite the importance of bathing during this period, women play only a marginal role in the social histories of spas. This project aimed to reassess women’s experience of baths in Renaissance Italy, highlighting their roles as consumers and patrons of balneological treatises and as spa users. It explored how women influenced physicians, prompting them to extract gender-specific medical knowledge from ancient texts.
This multidisciplinary project aimed to use a neglected body of primary data—including several letters that will be edited and published for the first time in an open-access database—to construct a picture of how doctors’ and female patients’ experiences of bathing were shaped by their readings (Greco-Roman, medieval, and contemporary texts); the establishments they chose (spas, private and public baths); and contemporary moral bias. Through this investigation, I intended to address broader questions concerning the nature and extent of physician-patient networks in Renaissance Italy and women’s agency in disseminating medical knowledge.
This multidisciplinary project aimed to use a neglected body of primary data—including several letters that will be edited and published for the first time in an open-access database—to construct a picture of how doctors’ and female patients’ experiences of bathing were shaped by their readings (Greco-Roman, medieval, and contemporary texts); the establishments they chose (spas, private and public baths); and contemporary moral bias. Through this investigation, I intended to address broader questions concerning the nature and extent of physician-patient networks in Renaissance Italy and women’s agency in disseminating medical knowledge.
Unfortunately, none of the project’s scientific objectives have been achieved due to its early termination after 3.5 months. However, during this period, I carried out an in-depth literature review on women and spas in Renaissance Italy, with a focus on gender biases, medical approaches to the female body, and concepts of hygiene and cleanliness. This preliminary research is the starting point for my article ‘The Women’s Baths: Spas, Ancient Medicine, and the Female Body in Renaissance Italy’, forthcoming in a special issue I am co-editing for the scientific journal Notes and Records of the Royal Society. Moreover, during the second month of my Fellowship, I presented a preliminary version of this article, entitled ‘Sensory Knowledge: Medicine, Bathing, and the Female Body in Renaissance Italy’, at the conference 'Writing the World: Early Modern Women, Natural Philosophy and Medicine' held at the University of York on 11–12 July 2024.
As I mentioned, none of the project’s scientific objectives have been achieved due to its early termination after 3.5 months. However, my forthcoming article, ‘The Women’s Baths: Spas, Ancient Medicine, and the Female Body in Renaissance Italy’, will have a significant scientific impact as the first reconstruction of women’s experience of bathing and living in a spa town in Renaissance Italy. It will delve into several unpublished letters from Italian archives, addressing issues of female agency, gender bias in medicine, medical approaches to the female body, and concepts of hygiene and cleanliness.