The Course of God’s Providence North American Religions Series Editors: Tracy Fessenden (Religious Studies, Arizona State University), Laura Levitt (Religious Studies, Temple University), and David Harrington Watt (History, Haverford College) In recent years a cadre of industrious, imaginative, and theoretically sophisticated schol- ars of religion have focused their attention on North America. As a result the field is far more subtle, expansive, and interdisciplinary than it was just two decades ago. The North American Religions series builds on this transformative momentum. Books in the series move among the discourses of ethnography, cultural analysis, and historical study to shed new light on a wide range of religious experiences, practices, and institutions. They explore topics such as lived religion, popular religious movements, religion and social power, religion and cultural reproduction, and the relationship between secular and religious institutions and practices. The series focus primarily, but not exclusively, on religion in the United States in the twentieth and twenty- first centuries. Books in the series: Ava Chamberlain, The Notorious Elizabeth Finbarr Curtis, The Production of American Tuttle: Marriage, Murder, and Madness in the Religious Freedom Family of Jonathan Edwards M. Cooper Harriss, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Terry Rey and Alex Stepick, Crossing the Theology Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion Shari Rabin, Jews on the Frontier: Religion in Miami and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America Jodi Eichler- Levine, Suffer the Little Children: Ari Y. Kelman, Shout to the Lord: Making Uses of the Past in Jewish and African Ameri- Worship Music in Evangelical America can Children’s Literature Joshua Dubler and Isaac Weiner, Religion, Isaac Weiner, Religion Out Loud: Religious Law, USA Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism Elizabeth Fenton, Old Canaan in a New Hillary Kaell, Walking Where Jesus Walked: World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes American Christians and Holy Land of Israel Pilgrimage Alyssa Maldonado- Estrada, Lifeblood of the Brett Hendrickson, Border Medicine: A Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Wil- Transcultural History of Mexican American liamsburg, Brooklyn Curanderismo Jenna Supp- Montgomerie, When the Medium Annie Blazer, Playing for God: Evangelical Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and Women and the Unintended Consequences of the Religious Origins of Network Culture Sports Ministry Philippa Koch, The Course of God’s Provi- Elizabeth Pérez, Religion in the Kitchen: dence: Religion, Health, and the Body in Early Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black America Atlantic Traditions Kerry Mitchell, Spirituality and the State: Managing Nature and Experience in Ameri- ca’s National Parks The Course of God’s Providence Religion, Health, and the Body in Early America Philippa Koch NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York www.nyupress.org © 2021 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Koch, Philippa, author. Title: The course of God’s providence : religion, health, and the body in early America / Philippa Koch. Description: New York : New York University Press, [2021] | Series: North American religions | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033224 (print) | LCCN 2020033225 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479806683 (cloth) | ISBN 9781479806720 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479806744 (ebook other) Subjects: LCSH: Medicine—Religious aspects—Christianity—History—18th century. | Medicine—United States—History—18th century. | United States—Church history—18th century. | Health—Religious aspects—Christianity—History—18th century. Classification: LCC BT732.2 .K63 2021 (print) | LCC BT732.2 (ebook) | DDC 261.5/61097309033—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033224 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033225 New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppli- ers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook For my parents, Margaret and Gary Koch Contents List of Figures ix Preface xi Introduction 1 1. Wholesome Words: Sickness and Narrative in Protestant Pastoral Manuals 21 2. Writing Sickness, Witnessing Providence: Letters, Journals, and Memoirs of the Atlantic World 55 3. Experience and the Soul in Eighteenth- Century Medicine 87 4. Providence and Benevolence in Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic 121 5. Medicine, Providence, and Nature in Eighteenth- Century Maternity 154 Epilogue 193 Acknowledgments 199 Notes 201 Index 255 About the Author 265 Figures Figure I.1. Title page of a later English edition of August Hermann Francke’s Segens- volle Fußstapfen. 8 Figure 1.1. Plate introducing Part I of Samuel Urlsperger’s The Health of the Sick and the Life of the Dying. 51 Figure 2.1. Page from Thaddeus Maccarty’s manuscript sermon on Psalm 30:4. 74 Figure 3.1. Postscript containing the physician Johann Juncker’s advice on the treatment of pica in Ebenezer, Georgia. 88 Figure 3.2. Title page of the twenty- first edition of John Wesley’s medical manual, printed in Philadelphia. 111 Figure 5.1. Hans Memling’s Virgin and Child, ca. 1475– 1480. 158 Figure 5.2. John Singleton Copley’s The Nativity, ca. 1776. 159 Figure 5.3. Benjamin West’s The Artist and His Family, ca. 1772. 159 Figure 5.4. Title page of John Cotton’s Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England. 163 Figure 5.5. Plate highlighting the dimensions of the pelvis, from Jean- Louis Baudelocque’s A System of Midwifery. 179 Figure 5.6. Plate introducing “Sect. III. The Nativity of Our Blessed Saviour Jesus,” in Jeremy Taylor’s Antiquitates Christianæ. 181 ix