Women of the Healing Arts: Domestic Medicine in Nova Scotia, 1750-1850

Abstract

This thesis addresses the history of British settler women’s encounters with health and medicine in Nova Scotia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Medicinal remedies used in the Northeastern Atlantic region reveal a combination of European and colonial practices and knowledges brought together by women practitioners, uncovering an exchange of information, ingredients, and recipes. Through the study of Loyalist settler Sarah Creighton Wilkins’ personal recipe collection and supplementary remedies found in the Early Modern Maritime Recipes database, this investigation extends beyond the life of the recipe writer and rather illuminates the social, economic, and political climates that influenced compilation. By situating domestic medicine in a Georgian Nova Scotia context, this thesis considers how the materiality and content of Creighton Wilkins’ collection— including illnesses addressed and ingredients used—recoups a history of British women’s relationship with health and medicine, whether rooted in British tradition or reflecting evolving gender perceptions and expectations.