The Healing Arts and Social Capital: The Paston Women of Fifteenth-Century England

In late-medieval England, women's informal and gratis health-care services helped them to accumulate and recompense social capital, which improved their families' and their own status and resources. Given the precariousness of health, special skills in the healing arts had a particular power to create a sense of gratitude and obligation. Evidence comes from the 15th-century letter collection of the Pastons, an ambitious gentry family from Norfolk. The Paston women appear both performing as healers in their kin networks and sending medical recipes and advice to their male and female relatives. Furthermore, seeking patronage at court, male relatives solicited medical secrets from the Paston women to pass along to their betters in an effort to advance their social status. This article argues that healthcare was a distinctly feminine form of participation in the Paston family's quest for social capital.