Disinfected Letters: A Documentary Heritage.

Abstract

The disinfected letter of the XVIII-XIX century in the West is a type of correspondence almost unknown outside the world of collectors of postal items. Disinfected mail is characterised by a series of anthropic pathologies produced by the methods and treatments applied in times of epidemics due to the suspicion that paper could be an agent of infectious transmission. We could say that this is unique to documentary heritage, hence the importance of the profiling and promotion of this type of correspondence in the field of preservation-restoration, in archives and libraries, and in the study of written culture.