GIFTED WOMEN AND SKILLED PRACTITIONERS: GENDER AND HEALING AUTHORITY IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY, 1740–1830 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Susan Hanket Brandt August 2014 Examining Committee Members: Susan E. Klepp, Advisory Chair, Department of History David Waldstreicher, Department of History Travis Glasson, Department of History Kathleen M. Brown, University of Pennsylvania © Copyright 2014 by Susan Hanket Brandt All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This dissertation uncovers women healers’ vital role in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century healthcare marketplace. Euro-American women healers participated in networks of health information sharing that reached across lines of class and gender and included female practitioners in American Indian and African American communities. Although their contributions to the healthcare labor force are relatively invisible in the historical record, women healers in the Delaware Valley provided the bulk of healthcare for their families and communities. Nonetheless, apart from a few notable monographs, women healers’ practices and authority remain understudied. My project complicates a medical historiography that marginalizes female practitioners and narrates their declining healthcare authority after the mid-eighteenth century due to the emergence of a consumer society, a culture of domesticity, the professionalization of medicine, and the rise of enlightened science, which generated discourses of women’s innate irrationality. Using the Philadelphia area as a case study, I argue that women healers were not merely static traditional practitioners destined to fall victim to the march of science, medicine, and capitalism as this older narrative suggests. Instead, I assert that women healers of various classes and ethnicities adapted their practices as they found new sources of healthcare authority through female education in the sciences, manuscript authorship, access to medical print media, the culture of sensibility, and the alternative gender norms of religious groups like the Quakers. Building on a longstanding foundation of recognized female practitioners, medically skilled women continued to fashion healing authority by participating in mutually affirming webs of medical information exchanges that reflected new ideas about science, health, and the body. In addition, women doctresses, herbalists, apothecaries, and druggists empowered themselves by participating in an increasingly commercialized and consumer-oriented healthcare marketplace. Within this unregulated environment, women healers in the colonies and early republic challenged physicians’ claims to a monopoly on medical knowledge and practice. The practitioners analyzed in this study represent a bridge between the recognized and skilled women healers of the seventeenth century and the female healthcare professionals of the nineteenth century. iv DEDICATION To Sam, Laura, Christie, and Hannah, with appreciation for all their support. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the process of researching and writing this dissertation on webs of healthcare information exchanges, I found myself supported by extensive networks of generous scholars, librarians, and archivists. I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my dissertation adviser, Professor Susan Klepp, whose unstinting guidance and support sustained me through the long archival search to recover women healers and to weave their stories into a dissertation. Professor David Waldstreicher’s ongoing encouragement, humor, and insightful comments helped me to refine my ideas and develop the dissertation. Professor Travis Glasson also offered thoughtful comments and kept my sights on the British Atlantic world. My outside reader, Professor Kathleen Brown, encouraged me to embark on my odyssey into the history field, and her advice and support on this project have been vital from the beginning. I have also valued Professor Catherine Kerrison’s mentorship. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s pathbreaking book, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812, provided an initial impetus for this project. I owe my title to Ulrich’s discussion of the generational legacies of the gifted and skilled midwife, Martha Ballard. I visited more than twenty archives and special collections libraries to conduct my research, and the assistance of the staff members at these institutions contributed significantly to this project. Although there is not space to thank each of these individuals, I am in their debt. I am also grateful to the institutions that granted me fellowships to pursue my research. Jim Green, Connie King, Linda August, and Nicole Joniec at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the staff at the Historical Society of vi Pennsylvania generously shared their time and expertise throughout the project and during my residence as a Helfand Fellow in Early American Medicine, Science, and Society. I also benefitted from a fellowship at the American Philosophical Society under the guidance of Earle Spamer, Roy Goodman, and Valerie-Ann Lutz. John Anderies, Ann Upton, and Diana Franzusoff Peterson helped me to explore the Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections Library during my tenure as a Gest Fellow. During my Neville Thompson Research Fellowship at Winterthur, Rosemary Krill, Jeanne Solensky, Mark Anderson, Linda Eaton, and Lisa Minardi enriched my project with recipe books and medical material culture. My fellowship at the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science allowed me to conduct research at a variety of institutions. Executive Director Babak Ashrafi and Simon Joseph connected me to a scholarly community of historians of science and medicine. I would also like to thank Laura Keim (Stenton), John Pollack (Penn Rare Book and Special Collections), Stacy Peeples (Pennsylvania Hospital Archives), and Joel Fry (Bartram’s Garden). The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, under the direction of Dr. Daniel K. Richter, has been a supportive scholarly home since I began my pursuit of history. My MCEAS Consortium fellowship at the center provided me with a collegial community of scholars whose insights added to my dissertation immeasurably. A Dissertation Completion Fellowship granted by the American Council of Learned Societies allowed me to focus on writing during the final year. The professors and graduate students in the Temple Department of History were indispensable. Many thanks to Brenna O’Rourke vii Holland, Nancy Morgan, Roberta Meek, Aaron Sullivan, Alex Elkins, Lindsay Helfman, and Dan Royles. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ xii Recovering a History of Women Healers ............................................................... xix A Historiography of Hidden Healers .................................................................... xxiv Women Healers in a Medical Marketplace ........................................................... xxix Healing Authority ................................................................................................. xxxi Summary ...............................................................................................................xxxv CHAPTER 1 THE AUTHORITY OF WOMEN’S HEALING NETWORKS ...................1 Legacies of Healing Networks Inscribed in Recipe Books ........................................5 Medical Recipe Books: An Authoritative Genealogy ..............................................18 Medicine and Mercantile ..........................................................................................28 Lady Bountiful: “She Cures All Her Neighbors of All Distempers” .......................34 Authoritative Women Healers within Diverse Healthcare Networks .......................44 Creditable Women with Imperative Authority .........................................................52 Conclusion: Authoritative Webs of Healing .............................................................56 CHAPTER 2 MEDIATORS OF CHANGE ON HEALING FRONTIERS .....................58 A Healer’s Persistence ..............................................................................................64 Authoritative “Guardians of Tradition” ....................................................................69 Healing Exchanges ...................................................................................................74 Crossroads of Healing Diplomacy ............................................................................81 Healing on Religious Frontiers .................................................................................88 Secret Indian Cures ...................................................................................................96 Conflict and Cooperation on Healing Frontiers ......................................................105 Conclusion: Intercultural Legacies .........................................................................117 ix CHAPTER 3 WOMEN HEALERS AND THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE