Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia

In her eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, Elizabeth Coates Paschall asserted her ingenuity and authority, developing an extensive healing practice in Philadelphia. Women Healers explores the lives and work of early American female practitioners, who provided the bulk of health care in the area for centuries, and documents their authoritative medical work that continued well into the nineteenth century. It reveals that women healers participated actively in medical and scientific knowledge production and the transition to market capitalism, and resisted physicians attempts to marginalize them.

Format: Hardback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

In her remarkable eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, Elizabeth Coates Paschall showcased her ingenuity and authority with bold strokes of her pen. Paschall, a Philadelphia healer, developed an extensive healing practice, consulted medical texts, and conducted experiments based on personal observations. As the premier city of medicine and science in British North America, Philadelphia provided a nurturing environment enriched by diverse healing cultures and Quaker values of gender equality and womens education. She collaborated with Benjamin Franklin in transatlantic medical and scientific networks. While Paschall was a notable figure, Women Healers reveals the stories of numerous women of European, African, and Native American descent who played a crucial role in providing healthcare in the greater Philadelphia area for centuries. The history of women practitioners often begins with the founding of Philadelphias Female Medical College in 1850, the first womens medical school in the United States. However, these students merely continued the legacies of women like Paschall. Surprisingly, the lives and work of early American female practitioners have been largely unexplored. While some sources portray them as amateurs whose influence declined, Susan Brandt documents womens authoritative medical work that persisted well into the nineteenth century. Spanning a century and a half, Women Healers traces the transmission of European womens medical remedies to the Delaware Valley, where they blended with African and Indigenous womens practices, forming hybrid healing cultures. Brandt's extensive archival research demonstrates that women healers were not rigid traditional practitioners destined to be overshadowed by the progress of Enlightenment science and capitalism. Instead, they were adaptable and influential figures who contributed significantly to the field of medicine.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780812253863