Knowlton's Books

May 14, 2024

A couple of weeks before I moved from Keene New Hampshire to Bemidji in July 2012, I made a trip over to the Franklin County Courthouse in Greenfield Massachusetts, to see if they had any documents in their Probate Office on the families I had been researching. I should have done this a long time ago, but I had never managed to get around to it. Now that I was leaving the area, I had to get over there or lose the chance.

It was worth the trip. Although it is a courthouse, so you’re likely to see people in shackles and you have to empty your pockets and go through a metal detector, the Probate people were very nice and helpful. They’re very focused on the present in their day-to-day work, of course. But they seemed to like it when historians come and show interest in the old documents they have stored away in the vaults. And there’s gold in those vaults.

I found wills and estate inventories for several of the people I was researching. Most importantly, I found a huge folder for Dr. Charles Knowlton, including the will and estate inventory, an inventory of items sold at the estate sale (and to whom they were sold!), and guardianship papers and accounts for the minor children Knowlton left behind. You can learn a lot about your subject from these types of documents. Who were his friends? Whom did he trust to look after his children? Who owed him money?

One of the most interesting things for me, so far at least, was the inventory. It lists everything from horses and buggies (how did he get around when seeing patients?) to featherbeds and mustard spoons (what did the house and furnishings look like?). The list of medical devices was surprising, and suggests (I’m going to check with a couple of historians of medicine to be sure) that Knowlton was at the cutting edge of his profession. And then there are the books.

By cross-referencing between the inventory and the estate sale documents, I think I managed to identify nearly all of the books in Charles Knowlton’s library. The majority of them were medical texts, as I had expected. There were 72 titles I was able to identify, but many of them contained multiple volumes (the largest being Braithwaite with 18), so the actual count was easily over a hundred books. This seems like quite a large collection for a country doctor. And interestingly, they aren’t all dated to the period when Knowlton was studying medicine (the mid-1820s). Several of them were brand new at the time of his death (1850), which again validates the idea that Knowlton was working hard to stay up to date on the very latest procedures and techniques. In addition to the texts, he subscribed to several regional and national medical journals – to one of which, The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, he was a regular contributor.

Collecting this information was not a trivial task: the inventory was a five-foot long roll of paper, and the titles were never complete. In about half a dozen cases, I was not able to decode the script, or there was no title or author I could find that matched what I seemed to be seeing. But I feel pretty good about getting all but 6 of about 150 titles -- that’s 96%! Here’s an example of the inventory:

I don’t know enough yet about these medical texts to say whether this collection represents a particular medical point of view, but I noticed there are a lot of anatomy texts and a lot of texts on treating women. This makes sense, given Knowlton’s interest in birth control, women’s health, and women’s rights in general. Interestingly, one of the books in what I’m calling the Freethought section of his library is Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Which brings us to the non-medical portion of the collection. The general library contained 28 titles, many of which (such as Peregrine Pickle) were probably books used in the education of the Knowltons’ three children or for family entertainment. The Freethought library, in contrast, contained 44 titles. I’m making value judgments here, assigning texts to one category or another. Clearly, Knowlton’s medicine was influenced by his philosophy. And clearly, even a book like Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language could be political. But also obviously, the Thomas Paine texts belong in Freethought, as do the histories of religion and books like Paley’s Natural Theology (Knowlton liked to understand the other position and to anticipate his opponent’s argument in debate). And I’ve also put Democracy in America and Weld’s American Slavery As it Is in this section, because I think Freethought was very political for Knowlton, and his ideas about America were tightly bound to this perspective.

Charles Knowlton died in 1850, so of course we don’t see one of the foundational texts of contemporary secularism, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of The Natural History of Creation, however, was right where it ought to be on Knowlton’s shelf. This is remarkable and it demonstrates not only Charles Knowlton’s incredible coolness, but that if anything, James Secord underestimated the importance of Chambers’ anticipation of Darwin’s theory of evolution in his book, Victorian Sensation. Since Knowlton was well-known as both a physician and a freethinker, students of early American medicine or of freethought would do well to study what he thought worth adding to his library.

Okay then! Without further ado, here are the books:

Oh, wait! One more thing: The dates below represent the first publication dates of these works, not necessarily the editions Charles Knowlton owned -- which of course we’d have no way of knowing. Many of these titles were regularly revised and updated. Similarly, the links do not necessarily represent the earliest edition or the edition Knowlton owned.

Medical:

John Abercrombie, Pathological and Practical Researches on Diseases of the Brain and Spinal Cord, 1829

Southern Society for Clinical Investigation, Philadelphia, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, (1830s-60s)

Joseph Ayre, Practical Observations on the Nature and Treatment of Marasmus, and of those Disorders Allied to It, which May Strictly be Called Bilious, 1822

Matthew Baillie, The Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body, 1793

Thomas Beddoes, Manual of Health, 1806

Charles Bell, The Anatomy of the Human Body, 1803

John Bell, Discourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds, 1795

J. Frederick Blumenbach, The Institutions of Physiology, 1795

The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal

W. Braithwaite, The Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery (a biennial journal), 1840-50

Amariah Brigham, A Treatise on Epidemic Cholera, 1832

F. J. V. Broussais, Conversations on the Theory and Practice of Physiological Medicine, 1825

But it might also be Alphonse Broussais, Self Preservation: Or, Sexuality Revealed: Being Facts of Vital Importance to the Married and Unmarried…, 1843

Thomas Brown, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1826

John Burns, T.C. James, The Principles of Midwifery; Including the Diseases of Women and Children, 1817

Charles Caldwell, Facts in Mesmerism, and Thoughts on its Causes and Uses, 1842

N. Chapman, Elements of Therapeutics and Materia Medica, 1822

J. Chitty, A Practical Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence, 1834

Colombat de L’Isere, Charles Meigs trans., A Treatise on the Diseases and Special Hygiene of Females, 1845

Astley Cooper, A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints, 1823

Astley Cooper and Richard Rowland, articles on disease in Medical and Surgical Monographs, 1838-40

Samuel Cooper, A Dictionary of Practical Surgery, 1809

Samuel Cooper, The First Lines of the Practice of Surgery, 1815

James Copland, A Dictionary of Practical Medicine, 1834

William P. Dewees, A Compendious System of Midwifery, 1825

William P. Dewees, A Treatise on the Diseases of Females, 1826

Robert Druitt, The Principles and Practice of Modern Surgery, 1847

A. J. B. Parent Duchatelet, Prostitution in Paris, Considered Morally, Politically, and Medically, 1845

Robley Dunglison, American Medical Library, 1837

Robley Dunglison, Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine, 1845

Robley Dunglison, Human Physiology, 1832

Robley Dunglison, Medical Lexicon: A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842

Robley Dunglison, New Remedies: The Method of Preparing and Administering Them; their Effects on the Healthy and Diseased Economy, &c., 1839

Guillaume Dupuytren, Clinical Lectures on Surgery, 1832

Lewis Durlacher, A Treatise on Corns, Bunions, the Diseases of the Nails, and the General Management of the Feet, 1845

John Eberle, A Treatise of the Materia Medica and Therapeutics, (2 vols) 1830

John Eberle, A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, 1830 (2 vols)

R.T. Evanson, H. Maunsell, A Practical treatise on the Management and Diseases of Children, 1838

O. S. Fowler, Love and Parentage, Applied to the Improvement of Offspring, 1846

Robert Gooch, An Account of Some of the Most Important Diseases Peculiar to Women, 1829

T.M. Greenhow, An Estimate of the True Value of Vaccination as a Security Against Small Pox, 1825

George Gregory, Treatise on The Theory and Practice of Physic, 1826

Horace Green, A Treatise on Diseases of the Air Passages, 1846

Samuel D. Gross, The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Bones and Joints, 1830

Marshall Hall, On Diagnosis, 1817

John Harrison, An Essay Towards a Correct Theory of the Nervous System, 1844

William Lawrence, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Eye, 1830

Charles Lee, A Dictionary of Practical Medicine, 1834

John Macculloch, An Essay on the Remittent and Intermittent Diseases, Including, Generally, Marsh Fever and Neuralgia, 1828

R. Marsh, The Animal Magnetizer: Or History, Phenomena and Curative Effects of Animal Magnetism; With instructions for Conducting the Magnetic Operation, 1840s

Jacques Maygrier, Atlas of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, 1822 not available online, but possibly similar to this, which is sometimes credited to Martin and Maygrier

The Medical Recorder of Original Papers and Intelligence, Philadelphia, 1816-26

John Ayrton Paris, Elements of Medical Chemistry, 1825

A. P. W. Philip, A Treatise on the More Obscure Affections of the Brain on which the Nature and Successful Treatment of many Chronic Diseases Depend, 1835

William Prout, Samuel Colhoun, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Treatment of Diabetes, Calculus, and Other Affections of the Urinary Organs, 1826

William Prout, On the Nature and Treatment of Stomach and Urinary Diseases, 1840

W. H. Ranking, The Half-Yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences, 1845-73, for example

P. Rayer, W. B. Dickinson trans., Treatise on Diseases of the Skin, Founded on New Researches in Pathological anatomy and Physiology, 1833

Possibly Reports and Other Documents Relating to the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester Mass, 1837

William Stokes, John Bell, Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic, 1842

J. G. Spurzheim, The Anatomy of the Brain, with a General View of the Nervous System, 1826

J. G. Spurzheim, Education: Its Elementary Principles, founded on the Nature of Man, 1847

J. G. Spurzheim, Observations on the Deranged Manifestations of the Mind; or, Insanity, 1836