STORIES IN SCIENCE
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  • Increase Allen Lapham, Scientist and Pioneer Weather Forecaster
  • William Stead's Titanic Dreams
  • Poul La Cour, Danish Inventor, Teacher and Windmill Pioneer
  • The Fault Might Not Be New Madrid's After All
  • Storks are the Stuff of Legend and Life
  • Science Songs to Sing, Getting Ready for a Winter Fling!
  • Fiona, the Female Gopher Frog: A New Year's Story
  • The Scientific Lives and Irresistible Irruptions of Snowy Owls
  • 'Tis The Season to be Snowy and Scientific!
  • Choosing Your Artificial or Living Christmas Tree
  • A Christmas Eve Trip with the Scientific Santa Claus
  • Christmas Presents With No Children
  • Searching for the True Shamrock
  • Flowers are Entwined in Human Grief
  • Poetic About Pigeons and Dewy-Eyed About Doves
  • Novarupta Volcano Erupts and Blows Mt. Katmai's Top
  • Licorice Root to Leeches: Doctoring Progresses in Erie and Warren Counties
  • Licorice Root to Leeches: Doctoring in 19th Century Erie and Warren County Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: Cholera Stalks Northwestern Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: Aunt Nancy Range Heals in Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: George McGuire Catches a Bad Cold
  • Licorice Root to Leeches
  • Science Fiction and Steam-punk Stories
    • Julia Wallingford's Intelligent Powers of Observation
    • The Mad Scientist and the Missing Ingredients
    • Savage Music
  • Speculation and Pure Speculation
    • Ella Thorington Nash Relied on Her "Open Vision"
    • Losing Out in Lovers Lane
    • The Train Chaser
  • Kingsville Digital

Licorice Root to Leeches:  Aunt Nancy Range Heals in Pennsylvania

Picture
 Aunt Nancy Range doctored backwoods patients in Warren and Erie County Pennsylvania, while medicine continued to grow into a profession.

In Erie County, Aunt Tamar Thompson and Aunt Nancy Range nursed the sick through cholera, and other epidemics. They sweated colds and starved fevers and delivered Erie county babies. By 1830, male physicians had taken over obstetrics and midwifery, at least for middle class women, but their dominance did not extend to the backwoods of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

Aunt Nancy Range Doctors Through Warren and Erie County 


Aunt Nancy Range, born Nancy Myers, was distantly related to Tamar Thompson and she followed the same profession. She was born June 4, 1784 in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, and was raised there. She married John Range Jr., on April 12, 1798, and they had 14 children. When Aunt Nancy wasn’t busy tending her own family, she was doctoring her neighbors and ailing citizens of Warren and Erie counties.

In those days a doctor didn’t need a license to practice medicine. A man might at any time put up a shingle and proclaim himself as a doctor. These untutored doctors made all their own medicine, and sometimes even distilled their own whiskey for medicinal purposes . Aunt Nancy’s skills were as good as or better than her male counterparts and she was in more demand.

Aunt Nancy Doctored from the Cradle to the Grave 



 In her middle age when she doctored in Warren County, Aunt Nancy rode Warren county bridle paths on her roan mare Mollie. She stretched above medium height with large bones, strong hands, and a strong jaw line. She wore steel rimmed specks with black strings on their bows fastened behind her head to keep the glasses from falling off when Mollie trotted hard or rode at a gallop.

Every pioneer household welcomed a frontier doctor like Aunt Nancy. The householders offered food, shelter and warm hospitality because it was an honor to shelter and entertain the doctor and in return, many householders eagerly awaited the news and gossip that Aunt Nancy carried from cabin to cabin.

When a message came that Aunt Nancy was needed she quickly dropped her herb brewing, spinning or dyeing while one of her sons saddled and bridled Mollie and brought her to the door. She grabbed her saddlebags that always hung behind the door ready for an emergency and climbed on Mollie’s back.

Through wind and rain and snow reaching to Mollie’s belly Aunt Nancy would ride on Mollie’s back to reach her patients. When Aunt Nancy arrived at her patient’s home and found a serious illness, she would stay right there until she nursed the sick person better. If the patient died, Aunt Nancy Range laid out the body, cooked a meal or two and tended matters in general.

Aunt Nancy’s Herb Garden 



At her cabin home near the headwaters of the Little Brokenstraw Creek in Warren County, Aunt Nancy had a large herb garden, a hundred yards long and 50 yards wide. In it she grew the herbs essential to her practice, like foxglove, catnip, lobelia, peppermint, smartweed, golden seal, spearmint, spikenard. The forest was also Aunt Nancy’s herb garden and from the forest she gathered bloodroot, myrrh, mandrake or May apple, sassafras, tag alder, slipper elm and many other herbs.

Aunt Nancy knew just where to find blossoms, leaves, bark, or roots that were good for cures in woods or clearings or swamps. Foxglove reduced dropsy, sassafras thinned the blood, yellow dock purified the blood, and golden seal and licorice root acted as a general tonic and cured stomach ailments. Boneset cured colds. Hemlock tea was a standard home remedy. Indians used Queen of the Meadow for colds and Aunt Nancy used the same remedy calling it “a reliable Indian remedy.”

Aunt Nancy Preaches Her Own Funeral Sermon 



 In the last years of her life Aunt Nancy ministered to souls as well as bodies. She preached on Sundays in a log school house and the good folks came from miles around on foot and horse back to hear her sermons. She preached the old fashioned hell fire and suffering for the damned and eternal bliss for the righteous. She loved that sort of preaching and went from the kindly character of nurse and doctor to the stern, vindictive pulpit personality in one sentence.

When she had reached her seventies and lived in Erie County near the site of present day Union City, Aunt Nancy Range who now had white curls at her temples, had a premonition. She announced that she would preach her funeral sermon on the following Sabbath. A large congregation assembled and listened to her preach. They all agreed that it was a good sermon, preached with power and persuasion. Two weeks later on December 8, 1860, she died and went to her reward which has to be a good one because she relieved so much suffering on earth.

References

Bates, Samuel, History of Erie County Pennsylvania, Warner Beers & Company Chicago, 1884

Bristow, Arch, Old Time Tales of Warren County, iUniverse, 2010

Conevery, Bolton Valencius, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land, Basic Books, 2002

Coulter, Harris, Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, Vol. 2, North American Books, 1994

Nelson, S.R., Biographical Dictionary and Historical Reference Book of Erie County, Pa., S.R. Nelson Publisher, Erie, Pa., 1896

Rosenberg, Charles, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, World Epidemics: A Cultural Chronology of Disease from Prehistory to the Present, McFarland & Company, 2003

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1775-1812, Vintage Books, 1990

Walker, Captain Augustus, Early Days on the Lakes with an Account of the Cholera Visitation of 1832, The Cornell Library, New York State Historical Literature

Wilson, David, History of the Settlement of Union Township


 

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  • Home
  • The Reach of Roses
  • Sparkling in Sunshine, Anchored in Wind - The Symbolic, Scientific Spider Web
  • Is Shishmaref, Alaska A Portent of Things to Come?
  • Moonlight Deer Hunting Along the Alpena -Amberley Ridge
  • The Sycamore Tree- Nature and Nurture Combined
  • Are Asian Carp Poised to Invade the Great Lakes? Exploring the Question
  • Dandelions are both Symbolic and Scientific
  • People and Places in Science
  • Dr. Glenn Seaborg-Renaissance Chemist, Renaissance Man
  • Biologist Kerry Kriger is on a Mission to SAVE THE FROGS
  • Madam Sophie Blanchard, "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration
  • Sister Elizabeth Kenny Fought Polio with Physical Therapy
  • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer Demonstrated Women's Scientific Aptitude
  • Father Jerome Sixtus Ricard Becomes Padre of the Rains
  • The 1897 Andree Expedition Tries to Balloon Over The North Pole
  • Thure and Ludwig Kumlien Blazed Trails in the Scientific World
  • Science People
  • The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake: Marquis Pombal Uses Science to Rebuild
  • Increase Allen Lapham, Scientist and Pioneer Weather Forecaster
  • William Stead's Titanic Dreams
  • Poul La Cour, Danish Inventor, Teacher and Windmill Pioneer
  • The Fault Might Not Be New Madrid's After All
  • Storks are the Stuff of Legend and Life
  • Science Songs to Sing, Getting Ready for a Winter Fling!
  • Fiona, the Female Gopher Frog: A New Year's Story
  • The Scientific Lives and Irresistible Irruptions of Snowy Owls
  • 'Tis The Season to be Snowy and Scientific!
  • Choosing Your Artificial or Living Christmas Tree
  • A Christmas Eve Trip with the Scientific Santa Claus
  • Christmas Presents With No Children
  • Searching for the True Shamrock
  • Flowers are Entwined in Human Grief
  • Poetic About Pigeons and Dewy-Eyed About Doves
  • Novarupta Volcano Erupts and Blows Mt. Katmai's Top
  • Licorice Root to Leeches: Doctoring Progresses in Erie and Warren Counties
  • Licorice Root to Leeches: Doctoring in 19th Century Erie and Warren County Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: Cholera Stalks Northwestern Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: Aunt Nancy Range Heals in Pennsylvania
    • Licorice Root to Leeches: George McGuire Catches a Bad Cold
  • Licorice Root to Leeches
  • Science Fiction and Steam-punk Stories
    • Julia Wallingford's Intelligent Powers of Observation
    • The Mad Scientist and the Missing Ingredients
    • Savage Music
  • Speculation and Pure Speculation
    • Ella Thorington Nash Relied on Her "Open Vision"
    • Losing Out in Lovers Lane
    • The Train Chaser
  • Kingsville Digital