161 NOTES Introduction: Almanacs and the Literature of Popular Health in Early America 1. Stowell, “Influence of Nathaniel Ames,” 128; Briggs, Essays, 13. 2. Briggs, Essays, 13. 3. Clarence S. Brigham, one-time Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society , wrote in 1925 on the value of almanacs to historical study. See his “Report of the Librarian.” 4. By the 1860s the almanac had lost its place as a leading secular publication . The emergence of other genres of popular print had reduced the almanac’s uniqueness significantly, and the almanac had fallen under the domination of— or, one might argue, been co-opted by—the proprietary medicine industry. For further discussion see the Epilogue. 5. For examples of how almanacs have been used to study American popular culture, see Hall, Worlds of Wonder; Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas; Reilly, “Common and Learned Readers”; and McCarter, “Of Physick and Astronomy.” 6. Drake, Almanacs of the United States, 1:ii. Capp’s English Almanacs examines the development of the genre in England. For a history of the early years of the Cambridge Press, see Winship, Cambridge Press, 1638–1692. 7. Brattle’s remarks are in 1694. An Almanack of the Coelestial Motions . . . MDCXCIV, [16]; Mather, Christian Philosopher (London, 1721) is cited in Leventhal , In the Shadow of the Enlightenment, 47. Mather’s comparison of astrology to Roman Catholicism is from his Angel of Bethesda, 301. See also Capp, English Almanacs; and Stowell, Early American Almanacs. Stowell’s work remains , after more than three decades, the best treatment of eighteenth-century American almanacs. 8. Many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century almanac makers hired “philomaths ,” or local mathematicians and astronomers, to provide the astronomical and astrological calculations (including weather predictions) for their publications. 9. Stowell, Early American Almanacs. See also Sagendorph, America and Her Almanacs; Kelly, Practical Astronomy during the Seventeenth Century; and Drake, Almanacs of the United States. 10. The term aspect refers to the angular relationship between various points or planets in the horoscope (an astrological chart of the heavens). The five major aspects listed in almanacs were conjunction (0 degrees), sextile (60 degrees), quartile or square (90 degrees), trine (120 degrees), and opposition (180 degrees). Lewis, Astrology Encyclopedia, 40–43. 11. The zodiac is the “belt” constituted by the twelve astrological signs. The foundation of medical astrology is a system of correspondences between the signs of the zodiac and the various organs and parts of the human body. The Anatomy was a pictorial representation of that relationship. Ibid., 354–57, 535–37. 12. Other astrological information sometimes included “Vulgar Notes,” which indicated numbers, letters of the alphabet, and days thought to have magical significance for the coming year. Butler, “Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage,” 330. 13. In 1786, the almanac maker Nathanael Low referred to almanacs’ importance in telling time when he boasted that they “serve as clocks and watches for nine-tenths of mankind.” Low’s Astronomical Diary, or Almanack for the Year . . . 1786 (Boston, [1785]) is cited in Drake, Almanacs of the United States, 1:viii. 14. Bidwell, “Printers’ Supplies and Capitalization,” 163–64; Green, “English Books and Printing in the Age of Franklin,” 266; Amory, “Reinventing the Colonial Book,” 45, 51. As Amory points out, a run of five hundred copies was considered a large edition for a full-length book in colonial America, whereas editions of five thousand to fifty thousand were common for such steady sellers as primers, spelling books, and almanacs. For information on Marshall’s Life of George Washington, see Casper, Constructing American Lives, 22–23. See also Wroth, Colonial Printer; Lehmann-Haupt, Book in America; Silver, American Printer, 1787–1825; and Tebbel, History of Book Publishing. 15. Wroth, Colonial Printer, 228; Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 58. Almanacs were sold in bookshops and general stores, and by printers, merchants, and peddlers . They also circulated in taverns, coffee houses, and post offices. Stowell, Early American Almanacs, 30–31. 16. An Almanack for the Year 1705. An Ephemeris of the Motions and Aspects of the Planets, [4]. The remarks of “B. A. Philo-Astro” (probably Andrew Bradford) come from An Astronomical Diary, or an Almanack for the Year . . . 1723 and are cited in Ruffin, “Urania’s Dusky Vails,” 308; Franklin, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1987), is cited in Anderson, Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin, 106; Low’s remarks are from his Astronomical Diary, or, an Almanack for the Year . . . 1762, [2]; Ames’s remarks are from his Astronomical Diary...