Stenton: Germantown Legacies: Women, Healing, & the Circulation of Medical Knowledge

Join Stenton Museum for a book talk with Susan Brandt: James Logan, Dr. George Logan, and Dr. Caspar Wistar exemplify men in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Germantown community who are known for their contributions to medicine and science. However, Deborah Norris Logan, Sarah Elizabeth Logan, Lowry Jones Wistar, and numerous other Germantown women were healing experts in their own right. Women healers’ medical and scientific networks extended beyond Germantown to include the greater Philadelphia area and Native American communities. Moreover, Pennsylvania German women, such as Catherine Fischer Diemer, brought unique alchemical practices from Europe, while others were part of a long vernacular healing tradition call braucheri or “Pow-Wow” medicine. Although the relative lack of sources makes it difficult to recover women’s healing work, tracing their medical networks allows us to see how women healers of various classes and ethnicities contributed to health care knowledge and practice. Event is free, but donations are appreciated. RSVP Required. Susan's new book Women Healers : Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia will be available for purchase. If you would like to reserve a copy, please email programs@stenton.org About the Author: Susan H. Brandt received her undergraduate degree from Duke University and her PhD in History from Temple University. She completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Her dissertation on women healers was awarded the 2016 Lerner-Scott Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in U.S. Women's History by the Organization of American Historians. Brandt has published an article in Early American Studies and a chapter in Barbara Oberg, ed., Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World. She teaches history at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Prior to pursuing a career in history, Brandt worked as a nurse practitioner.