The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker by Crane Elaine Forman;

Author:Crane, Elaine Forman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

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1. HSD's farm in Pennsbury, Bucks County, Pa.

2. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine; or, The Family Physician: Being an Attempt to Render the Medical Art More Generally Useful, by Shewing People What Is in Their Own Power Both with Respect to the Prevention and Cure of Diseases: Chiefly Calculated to Recommend a Proper Attention to Regimen and Simple Medicines (Edinburgh: Balfour, Auld, and Smellie, 1769). The first American edition of Buchan, one of the most popular medical books of its time, was published in 1771; by 1797 it had gone through at least fifteen editions (DNB; NUC).

3. The words “same occasion” crossed out.

4. Overseers of the women's Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of the Northern District had reported that Molly Rhoads had married “contrary to the good order establish'd amongst us as a religious society.” Following the ordinary procedure of the Society of Friends, a committee (Tomkins and West) was appointed to determine whether she wished to acknowledge her misconduct, write an “offering” publicly stating her sentiments, and be re-accepted into the meeting. A similar procedure was being followed in the Men's Meeting with regard to Sammy Rhoads (Philadelphia Northern District Monthly Meeting, Women's Minutes, 1796–1811, 17, Men's Minutes, 1795–1804, 116, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College; Frost, Quaker Family, 55–57).

5. The blisters were apparently made from dried beetles or Spanish flies (OED, s.v. “fly-blister” and “cantharides”).

6. Ice cream, developed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, became well known in New York in the 1780s. It was a popular dessert among the elite as well as President Washington and members of his administration. The arrival of French refugees in Philadelphia in the 1790s further spread its popularity, since many of the refugees, like Malerive, sold ice cream and other special foods (Paul Dickson, The Great American Ice Cream Book [New York: Atheneum, 1972], 20–24; Catherine A. Herbert, “The French Element in Pennsylvania in the 1790s: The Francophone Immigrant's Impact,” PMHB 108 (1984): 461).

7. Though Molly Rhoads acknowledged “accomplishing her Marriage contrary to the good order established among friends, and in disobedience to her parents,” the committee that had visited her told the meeting that they “did not think her at that time in a suitable disposition to make satisfaction to the meeting.” When a written apology or acknowledgment was not explicit or contrite enough, the meeting could insist upon changes and clarifications, which it apparently did here. Since Molly and her offering could not “pass” the meeting, her case would be continued and a new committee appointed to visit her (Philadelphia Northern District Monthly Meeting, Women's Minutes, 1796–1811, 18–19, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College; Barbour and Frost, Quakers, 110).

8. It was widely believed that climactics or climacterics, critical stages in human life when a person was especially susceptible to changes in health and fortune, occurred in the years that were multiples of seven or nine; hence the sixty-third birthday was considered the “grand climactic” (OED, s.v. “climacteric”).

9. HD believed in being bled twice a year, around the time of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

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