Abstract
This article discusses the requests submitted by nuns from Convento da Ajuda (Ajuda Convent) to leave their life of enclosure to receive treatment for contagious diseases. Disease was one of the few cases in which nuns were granted permission to leave. The female orders were strictly cloistered in order to preserve their purity as virgins consecrated to Christ. Extant documents detail the causes of the diseases, the ways they were transmitted, and the treatments used to fight them. These processes shed light on the procedures adopted outside the cloisters so that the nuns did not jeopardize their reclusion and honor when they went to distant places in search of treatment.
Convento da Ajuda; tuberculosis; consumption; Hansen’s disease; female orders