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Knowlton

Charles Knowlton

Achievements: Initiated the wide-spread use of contraceptives.

Born: May 10, 1800; Templeton, Worcester County, Massachusetts

Died: February 20, 1850; Winchendon, Massachusetts (Aged 49)

Field & Discipline: Medicine; Physician

Language: English

Father: Stephen Knowlton

Mother: Comfort White

Siblings: Unknown

Spouse: Tabitha Stuart (married 1821)

Children: Four children

Education: Dartmouth Medical College, 1822-24

Major Work:

“The Fruits of Philosophy, or The Private Companion of Adult People” (1832)

Life & Times:

At the age of 17 Knowlton began suffering from 'gonorrhoea dormientium' (a condition causing involuntary ejaculations during sleep), which was then regarded by doctors and the public as a grave threat to health and sanity. Over the next three years Knowlton sought treatment from ten different doctors and endured a variety of regimes of drugs, all of which proved ineffective and left him deeply depressed and unable to work.

In 1821 Knowlton left home and moved into the house of a local mechanic named Stuart who had offered him electrical therapy for his condition - a common treatment for such ailments at the time. Later the same year Knowlton married one of Stuart's six daughters, Tabitha.

From this point onwards, greatly angered by what he considered the wholly detrimental effect of religious attitudes on current medical practice, he dedicated himself to the pursuit of medical knowledge and criticism of conventional Christian beliefs.

In 1821 Knowlton was apprenticed to Dr. Charles Wilder of Templeton, Mass., but soon became dissatisfied with the instruction he was receiving, and stole a corpse so that he could teach himself anatomy.

In 1822 he entered the New Hampshire Medical Institution (now Dartmouth Medical School) at Hanover, partially financing his studies by grave-robbing (for which he was indicted while at college). Despite the unconventionality of his background, appearance and activities, Knowlton proved himself a popular and able student, and completed his M.D. in 1824 with a thesis on the necessity of public support for dissection.

In 1825 Knowlton set himself up in private practice in Worcester, Mass., but a year later he was convicted of conducting illegal dissections and was imprisoned for two months in the local jail.

While in prison, Knowlton wrote “Elements of Modern Materialism” (1829), in which he defended agnosticism and attempted to demonstrate that human thought and behaviour could best be understood as the result of environmental conditioning and physical laws. While the book failed to sell, the costs of publication leaving Knowlton deep in debt, it gained him acceptance within an international circle of freethinkers.

In 1830 he was invited by [collaborated with] Robert Dale Owen*, social reformer and editor of the “Free Inquirer,” to address other freethinkers in Manhattan. Knowlton accepted the offer, and had long discussions with Owen and others on the most pressing issues of the day, including the need for birth control and contraception.

The following year, Owen published a book on planned parenthood entitled “Moral Physiology,” but Knowlton considered Owen's choice of contraception (coitus interruptus) as unsatisfactory for the male.

As a result, he began research for the work which made him famous:  “Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Adult People” (1832), the first popular manual on contraception by an American physician.  In this book, which was at first published anonymously, Knowlton gave a detailed treatment of human sexual anatomy and physiology, a utilitarian defence of the practice of contraception, and formulas for his chosen method -- spermicidal douches.

The book sold well, and shortly after publication he settled in the village of Ashfield, in Berkshire, Mass., where he established a highly successful medical practice, in spite of problems with the local clergy over his "immoral" works.

In 1833 Knowlton published a second edition, this time carrying his name, and three

prosecutions followed under the Massachusetts common law obscenity statute. He was first fined in Taunton, Mass., then sentenced to three-months hard labor at Cambridge, and finally a charge at Greenfield was dropped after two juries failed to reach a verdict.

Knowlton was, however, always personally popular, and managed to find acceptance in Ashfield by claiming that these legal actions were inspired rather by his freethinking attitudes than his advocacy of birth control.

Knowlton spent 18 years as a general practitioner at Ashfield, becoming an outspoken critic of quackery and a prominent member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. He also continued writing articles for journals run by freethinkers, and for the “Boston Medical and Surgical Journal” (now “The New England Journal of Medicine”), which published his autobiography in two issues in 1851. He died in 1850 of heart disease while visiting relatives at Winchendon, Massachusetts.

Knowlton's “Fruits of Philosophy” sold well during his lifetime, and paved the way for many other 19th-century manuals on sex and contraception. After the trials in the United States in the 1830s, it again became notorious in the 1870’s when the English social reformers and freethinkers [inspired] Bradlaugh* and [inspired] Annie Besant* were charged with obscenity by the English courts for reprinting 'Fruits' in 1877.  After a highly publicized trial, the pair were convicted and sentenced to jail, but the conviction was subsequently quashed on appeal.

The trial was important as a test case for the freedom of the press and for the freedom of information concerning sex and procreation, and after the trial sales of the book rose from fewer than 1,000 a year to more than 250,000 a year.

Assessment: His work on birth control set the scene for modern contraception.

Oneliner: Charles Knowlton, early advocate of contraception

Bibliography:

Attachments