New Book by Dr. Cristian Berco

Dr. Cristian Berco of the Department of History has recently published a book entitled From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain (University of Toronto Press). Dr. Berco traces the history of The Great Pox – a disease we now know as syphilis – in seventeenth-century Spain, relates the social stigma and physical suffering that this disease placed on its victims, and outlines the lives of patients within and beyond the walls of the medical institution that cared for them. As Berco outlines: “Patients were much more than merely diseased. They carried with them familial interactions, civic identities, relationships with networks, and careers” (Berco, From Body to Community, xi). Drawing upon the sole surviving admissions book for Toledo, Spain’s Hospital de Santiago and on a number of archival records and notarial sources, Dr. Berco paints a portrait of the complex social repercussions of living with a shameful disease.
More information about this publication can be found here.