Prudence Punderson (see previous post), age twenty-four, wrote to her sister Hannah about a serious medical problem she was having.
Dec: Saturday 30th A[nno] 1780Next monday it will be 5 weeks since I was taken with a severe fever, which ocation’d much pain in my right arm during the whole Night & in 2 or 3 days I perceived a sweeling just above my right Breast, Doctr: Mitchel endeavoured to scatter it but to no purpose; in the 2d week of my sickness for a while I was in great agony with the Cholick, but applycation of medicine soon gave me releif, my fever which has occasioned the Doctr: to look upon me dangerously Ill; has been broke for several days & the Gathering on my breast has been launced twice, the Cavity of matter lay so deep in my stomack that he was obliged to cut 3 times down with his launcet before he could reach it, he has thought that also rendered my recovery unsertain, but now is much better & gitting well, tho Doctr: Mitchel & Doctr: Mott both of them says the Bone is defected & by what I can gather of their judgments must Content my self to be as long disabled for the use of my Nedle as I have allready been, & now trespass in the limits allowd me by the Doctrs: in using my arm so much as to write you this letter about my Illness. Since my fever has been broke I have gather’d strength & health beyond expression.
One wonders what ailment Prudence complained of. A cyst? Or could it have breast cancer?
The letter can be found on page 170 of In the Words of Women, from the Prudence Punderson Papers, Connecticut Historical Society.
Prudence Punderson (1758-1784) was born in Preston, Connecticut. Her father was a Loyalist and fled with his family to Long Island during the Revolution. Prudence was a gifted artist with her needle and embroidered this picture, sewn on silk with silk thread, when she was a young woman. It is a “momento mori,” entitled “The First, Second and Last Scenes of Mortality.” Intended to remind one of the shortness of life, it depicts the three stages in the life of a woman—in this case Prudence’s: infancy, womanhood, and death. Prudence is the baby in a cradle tended by a black servant; she is the young woman at the table in the prime of life; and she is in a coffin marked with the initials PP. Sadly, Prudence’s life was short. She married Dr. Timothy Rossiter in 1783 and died in 1784 after giving birth to a daughter.
