Knowlton Biography, Chapter 23
Twenty-three: Fruits of Philosophy
This work besides conveying a knowledge of these and other checks, contains much useful and interesting information relating to the generative function. It is written in a plain, yet chaste style.—The great utility of a work such as this, especially to the poor, is ample apology (if apology be needed) for its publication.
After several months of thinking and experimenting, Charles came up with his own solution to the population question. Charles and Robert Dale Owen agreed that the birth control methods Owen had described in the first edition of Moral Physiology were imperfect. Owen had called, in the conclusion of his book, for help from “any individuals who can adduce, from personal experience, facts connected with this subject.” Charles responded to Owen’s call, and began his book with this Preface:
It is a notorious fact that the families of the married often increase beyond what a regard for the young beings coming into existence, or the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate; and philanthropists, of first rate moral character, in different parts of the world, have for years been endeavoring to obtain and disseminate a knowledge of means whereby men and women may refrain at will from becoming parents, without even a partial sacrifice of the pleasure which attends the gratification of the reproductive instinct. But no satisfactory means of fulfilling this object were discovered, until the subject received the attention of a physician who had devoted years to the investigation of the most recondite phenomena of the human system, as well as chemistry. The idea occurred to him of destroying the fecundating power of the sperm by chemical agents; and upon this principle he devised “checks,” which reason alone would convince us must be effectual, and which have been proved to be so, by actual experience.
Fruits of Philosophy was as unlike Knowlton’s previous book, Modern Materialism, as it could possibly have been. Where his first book had been a leather-bound tome containing 448 pages of philosophical argument, Fruits of Philosophy was a little book written in simple, practical language. Actually, it was a tiny book. Its fifty-seven pages of text measured only about two and a half by three inches. The whole book, bound in a blue cloth cover, could easily be hidden in the palm of the reader’s hand. It was designed to be, as its subtitle promised, “The Private Companion of Young Married People.”
The first edition of Fruits of Philosophy was printed on rough, heavy paper, probably by Charles himself. Although the title page says the book was printed in New York in 1832, the author is listed simply as “A Physician.” And the copyright announcement on the following page says the book was “Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1831, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the District of Rhode Island.” There’s no reason why a professional publisher in New York would have traveled to Providence to file a copyright application, but Charles had moved to the city briefly, and tried to build a medical practice there. Also, after his experience with Modern Materialism, there’s every reason why Charles might have been willing to confuse the world about who had written this book and where it had been published.
Fruits of Philosophy was also quite poorly printed. The title page and many of the interior pages of the volume were double-struck. Double-striking produces an effect like a drop-shadow when the printer accidentally lets the type come in contact with the page a second time. No self-respecting printer would bind double-struck pages, and no one who was paying a professional printer would settle for such careless work. But it’s exactly the type of mistake that might be made by an amateur, borrowing press time and producing his own book on a shoestring budget.
Knowlton’s book began with a seven-page “Philosophical Proem,” in which Charles briefly explained his ideas about human nature and the passions that lead to sexual desire. People should not abstain from sex, Charles said, they should devise ways to protect themselves from unwanted consequences. “Mankind will not so abstain,” he concluded, “and if means to prevent the evils that may arise from a farther gratification can be devised, they ought not.”
Charles then moved on to a discussion of the population question, some of which he cited word for word from Moral Physiology. He described both male and female reproductive anatomy—including, along the way, the observation that “Every young married woman ought to know that the male system is exhausted in a far greater degree than the female, by gratification. It seems, indeed,” Charles continued, “to have but very little effect, comparatively, on some females.” It’s reasonable to suppose that some of Charles’s insights about female gratification came from his own marriage. And Tabitha had borne three children between 1824 and 1828, and was pregnant with their fourth as Charles was writing, which certainly added urgency to the author’s claims that people should consider the mother’s health and have children when they could afford them. Not coincidentally, after Charles completed his experiments and perfected his technique, he and Tabitha managed to avoid having another child until they were ready six years later, in 1837.
Knowlton’s medical solution to the population question was a douche that a woman could use after sex to kill sperm cells. Charles described the long-tailed “animalcules” he saw with his microscope, and said he had found a spermicide that was effective on them while being mild and non-toxic enough that it wouldn’t irritate its user. An important feature of his new method, Charles said, was that unlike withdrawal or condoms, the woman controlled it. The idea that birth control was a woman’s right and responsibility was a remarkable insight for a man to have in 1831—it’s possible that some of the credit for Charles’s radical approach belongs to his freethinking wife, Tabitha.
Charles did show a concern for women that was unusual for men of his time, though. In his concluding remarks at the end of Fruits of Philosophy, Charles’s ultimate argument for birth control was women’s health. After explaining throughout the book the benefits to a woman’s physical health of planned, reasonably-spaced pregnancies, Charles turned in his conclusion to the connection between a woman’s sexuality and her mental health. “I admit that human beings might be so constituted that if they had no reproductive instinct to gratify, they might enjoy good health,” Charles said. But that was not the way it was:
But being constituted as they are, this instinct cannot be mortified with impunity. It is a fact universally admitted, that unmarried females do not enjoy so much good health, and attain to so great an age as the married; notwithstanding the latter are subject to the diseases and pains incident to child-bearing. A temperate gratification promotes the secretions, and the appetite for food; calms the restless passions; induces pleasant sleep; awakens social feelings; and adds a zest to life which makes one conscious that life is worth preserving.
Fruits of Philosophy claimed that both men and women should enjoy their sexuality, and that people—women—had the right and responsibility to plan their families and choose the timing and number of their children. Knowlton explained male and female physiology and described a new and relatively effective birth control method, in language that regular people could understand. And he put it all in a small and inexpensive package. If they had disliked him before, the protectors of public morality were going to hate Charles now!