Knowlton Biography, Chapter 34
Thirty-four: Moral Physiology Revised
Notwithstanding, I recommend early marriage.
In the summer of 1834, Charles Knowlton was away from home for nearly a month. Charles was probably in New York for much of this time, working with Robert Dale Owen to incorporate his medical ideas into the next edition of Owen’s book, Moral Physiology. The new book’s subtitle was changed from “A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question,” to the more direct, “A Treatise on Popular Questions, or Means Devised to Check Pregnancy.” And unlike earlier versions of Moral Physiology, the 1836 edition’s title page no longer carried Robert Dale Owen’s name. The new edition, like the first edition of Fruits of Philosophy, was “By A Physician.” Unlike Knowlton’s palm-sized “little book,” however, Moral Physiology was a full-sized, seventy-six page volume.
Although Moral Physiology was still organized into chapters similar to the earlier editions, the 1836 book incorporated a lot of Knowlton’s ideas—and also a lot of his words. The Preface used Charles’s opening, “It is a notorious fact, that 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.” The opening argument reflected both men’s understanding of the social importance of their work: “The great utility of such a work as this, especially to the poor, who live, and fill our Poor Houses with innocent children, to be supported at the expense of the counties or towns, is ample apology (if apology be needed) for its publication.”
Moral Physiology didn’t simply replace Owen’s previous passages with Knowlton’s words, though. Throughout the new book, Knowlton’s medical knowledge was combined with Owen’s ideas about the proper relationship of men and women, with social theories, and with literary references that were clearly not Charles’s. A new chapter “On the Effects of Onanism,” for example, began with a reference to the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis. And after briefly describing masturbation in medical terms, the chapter moved on to recount several alarming cases—a technique Charles had objected to in Tissot’s book—and then to an attempt to see the woman’s point of view that also seems more like Owen’s voice than like Knowlton’s. After remarking, “Females are more frequently the chosen than choosers,” the chapter advised men to select a partner of similar temperament, using a passage of poetry about tigers and deer. But at the close of the chapter, Knowlton’s voice reappeared, advising readers to marry young.
Also unlike Knowlton’s own book, the new edition of Moral Physiology contained all the birth control methods Owen had originally identified, and added Charles’s method from Fruits of Philosophy. In this chapter, however, Robert Dale got the last word in the collaboration, and recommended the contraceptive sponge as his favorite method. “For it is from personal experience I speak of the spunge,” Owen concluded. A “decent respectable female” would find “that it meets her expectations—which I know it will.”
In a new concluding chapter, Owen and Knowlton revised the Investigator article Charles had appended to the 1834 edition of Fruits of Philosophy. Once again, they addressed the two objections that birth control was against nature and that it would encourage vice. The answer to the fist question was essentially Charles’s: “It is by art that we subdue the forest—by art that we contend against the elements—by art we combat the natural tendency of disease, &c.” The answer to the second incorporated Robert Dale’s perspective:
As to the outrageous slander which here and there one has been heard to utter against the fair sex, in saying that fear of conception is the foundation of their chastity, it must be the sentiment of a “carnal heart,” which has been peculiarly unfortunate in its acquaintances. “To the pure all things are pure.”
Although the new edition of Moral Physiology incorporated material by both Knowlton and Owen, improved the arguments made in the earlier editions, and added better medical information including Knowlton’s birth control method, it was not the version that most readers—or historians—ever saw. The previous version of the book was widely reprinted in America and in London before the 1836 edition came out, and it rather than the revision became the basis of reprints by many publishers. An 1833 London edition of the previous version of Moral Physiology was added to the collections of the British Museum in 1837.
Because the earlier edition of Moral Physiology was widely reprinted, it was read by many more people in the nineteenth century, and by many more historians since then. It is also the edition that can now be easily found in digital archives online. The later, revised version includes more of the authors’ responses to the ongoing controversies over birth control, and shows how their understanding of the subject evolved. The revised edition of Moral Physiology also shows the ongoing collaboration of Owen and Knowlton to promote birth control, over a period of nearly a decade. This is an important demonstration of the fact that freethinkers and social reformers weren’t isolated individuals—they were members of a large and far-reaching community working for change in the nineteenth century.