Elizabeth Coates Paschall lived in Philadelphia during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, part of a Quaker community that emphasized literacy, introspection, and practical service. Born into the Coates family, prominent in Pennsylvania’s early development, Elizabeth married into the Paschall family, another well-known Quaker lineage. Widowed relatively young, she became both head of her household and a trusted community resource for healing and health advice.
Unlike many women healers whose knowledge remained oral, Elizabeth recorded her treatments, trials, and observations in a medical manuscript notebook she kept over decades. In it, she cataloged over 130 remedies, ranging from cough cures and wound salves to birth preparations and fever treatments. The manuscript, discovered in the 20th century and preserved in historical archives, reveals not only her skill but her methodological approach to medicine.
Her remedies often mixed traditional English herbcraft with ingredients obtained through the Atlantic trade — including cinnamon, nutmeg, Barbados aloe, sassafras, senna, rhubarb root, and Indian tobacco. She treated both family and neighbors, Quakers and non-Quakers alike, and was often called upon in cases where professional male physicians either failed or proved too costly.
Deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, Paschall engaged in experimentation and adaptation, adjusting dosages and methods based on results. She annotated her manuscript with marginal notes on efficacy, occasional failures, and alternatives. She also documented a strong understanding of women’s health, including remedies for miscarriage, menstruation pain, and childbirth aftercare.
Elizabeth’s Quaker values also shaped her approach to illness as both physical and spiritual. She emphasized cleanliness, diet, and calm, writing often about the importance of rest and care, not just prescriptions. The community-centric, empirical, and highly literate world of 18th-century Philadelphia offered women like her rare space to contribute to scientific practice — though she was not formally recognized by medical institutions of her day.
Elizabeth Coates Paschall died in 1768, leaving behind a rare document that bridges domestic medicine and Enlightenment science, and offers a woman’s reasoned, firsthand contribution to early American medical history.
A Bit of Bibliography
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. Basic Books, 1983. — Discusses women’s domestic labor, including medical care in early modern households.
Forman, S. Elise. Herbs and Health in Colonial Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Heritage, vol. 10, no. 2, 1984, pp. 18–25. Discusses Pennsylvania herbal traditions, referencing Paschall’s contributions.
Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Women and Health in America: Historical Readings. University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. — Includes selections from Paschall’s manuscript and discussion of women’s medical manuscripts.
Morgan, Jennifer L. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. \Provides broader context for women’s reproductive medicine in the colonial world, including Quaker women.
Paschall, Elizabeth Coates. Medical Recipes and Notes Manuscript, c. 1720–1768. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Original handwritten volume of Paschall’s remedies, held in HSP archives.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. Vintage Books, 1990. — Offers essential comparative insight into women’s healing documentation during a similar period.
