ABSTRACT
As pleased as Dickinson was to see the new nation grow and thrive, she remained at a distance from some of the developments that accompanied life in the newly created United States. As national focus shifted from female action to feminine virtue in the 1780s and 1790s, Rebecca Dickinson observed with some alarm changing patterns of sexual behavior. She was not a mother, but as the sole remaining child still at home with her own mother in the Dickinson homestead, she did grow into her role as an aunt and also acquired a nurturing, quasi-parental role as the mistress to the young apprentices she trained in her trade. That such an event could occur in the so-called Age of Enlightenment reminds us how uneven was the progress of scientific knowledge. Although great leaps were being made that would revolutionize medical understanding, great misapprehensions endured.
