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HEIndividual fellowship2024–2026

WomenAndTheBaths · Women and the Baths: Ancient Medicine, Pleasure, and The Female Body in Renaissance Italy

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2024-05-15 → 2026-05-14
EU contribution
€188,590
Participants
1
Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Results in brief

Women and the Baths: Ancient Medicine, Pleasure, and The Female Body in Renaissance Italy

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.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Despite the growing interest in womens contribution to texts, works of art, and cultural strata of society during the Renaissance, research has focused disproportionately on their roles as patrons, purchasers, and creators of art. Less attention has been paid to the connections between womens agency and one of the most popular medical practices of the time: bathing. Baths and daily exercise were recognised as an essential part of the health routine of the ancients, and this routine was revived by early modern physicians and prescribed for all sorts of ailments. Yet, recent works on baths in Renaissance Italy dedicate only a few paragraphs to women within broader discussions of aristocratic bathing practices. This project will re-evaluate womens experience of baths in Renaissance Italy, revealing their prominent role as consumers and patrons of balneological treatises as well as users of spas. It will also highlight how womens influence spurred physicians to mine ancient medical texts in search of gender-specific medical knowledge, an exceptional innovation, especially if one considers the widespread gender bias still affecting medical curricula today.Building on my postdoctoral research on ancient balneology and its reception, this multidisciplinary project will use a neglected scattered 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 will address broader questions concerning the nature and extent of physician-patient networks in Renaissance Italy and womens agency in disseminating medical knowledge.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA · VeneziaCoordinatorItaly

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union