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Such then were the contemporary medical views that Galdós had available to him at the time that he wrote Fortunata y Jacinta, acquired either from his own reading or from his medical friends. It should not be thought, however, that the picture of Maxi represents any one individual in real life, rather that his descriptions can be thought of as a composite mosaic of signs and symptoms with which a fictional image is constructed. The complex of features,452 some more than others, provides a more or less indirect hint to his readers as to what they should understand the nature of Maxi‘s condition to be. Despite the changing climate in the 1880s as to what in the realm of sexuality was acceptable in literature, certain taboos remained in force, to be contravened at the author‘s peril.453 Among these were explicit descriptions of sexual activity, overt references to variations in sexual orientation (homosexuality, for example, which was medicalized at the time as a pathological perversion 454) and venereal disease.
work rather than the first (1880-1883), though the Biblioteca Nacional catalogue and the text itself do not make this clear. 452 complex of features: the importance of assessing all the clinical features together is emphasized by Hutchinson, ―I must beg to remark most emphatically, that it is not by any one symptom that the diagnosis of hereditary syphilis can ever be supported, but by the careful estimation of the entire group. They must be taken together in their relative bearings upon each other. By too great a reliance on single ones, however well marked, mistakes of the most egregious character would often occur, while I feel confident, that by the opposite course a very trustworthy conclusion many often be arrived at.‖ (Hutchinson 265). I might add, in a reverse direction, that I was trained as a medical student to avoid the sin of ―diagnostic greed,‖ in which diagnosis is witheld until all the known features of a disease process have become manifest, since it can result in delay in appropriate diagnosis and treatment. Diseases do not manifest themselves in all individuals in the same way with all the known features of the illness. A subtle indication that Galdós was writing as a medical enthusisast, rather than as a experienced physician, lies in the fact that some of his representations of disease, such as those of Maxi‘s syphilis and Alejandro‘s pulmonary tuberculosis in El doctor Centeno, seem to include almost all the described features of their respective diseases. 453 author‘s peril: the explicit novel La prostituta by Eduardo López Bago resulted in the author being prosecuted in 1884 (Pura Fernández, Bago 37 ff.). 454 pathological perversion: ―the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was consitituted from the moment it was characterized---Westphal‘s famous article of 1870 [...] can stand as the date of its birth.‖ (Foucault, Sexuality 43)