Domestic medicine: slaves, servants and female medical expertise in late medieval Valencia

Domestic slaves and servants were ubiquitous figures in the late medieval M editerranean world, whose health and physical condition were matters of special concern to their masters and mistresses. This concern not infrequently prompted legal action. Fifteenth‐century civil court records are rife with suits filed by disgruntled masters protesting that a recently purchased slave was ‘defective’ or an exasperated mistress claiming that a servant was ‘unfit’ for service. To distinguish normal human imperfections from critical defects, the court collected testimony not only from medical ‘professionals’ (male, university‐trained physicians) but also laywomen who, on occasion, offered their own alternative diagnoses. Using the rich body of court records extant from fifteenth‐century Valencia as its evidentiary base, this article examines the interplay between lay and ‘expert’ understandings of how the body functioned and reveals how in spite of the new valuation of the medical expertise of university‐trained physicians and surgeons, fifteenth‐century courts continued to solicit and cite the opinions of lay women, reflecting their ongoing importance in the provisioning of healthcare.