WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.980 So I want you to picture the ideal country doctor 00:00:03.980 --> 00:00:07.519 in like 19th century Massachusetts. You are probably 00:00:07.519 --> 00:00:12.099 imagining a carriage. Maybe a black bag. Right. 00:00:12.179 --> 00:00:14.519 Maybe some leeches. Exactly. Some leeches and 00:00:14.519 --> 00:00:17.460 just a very pious, upstanding member of the church. 00:00:17.579 --> 00:00:19.480 The whole Norman Rockwell painting. Yeah. The 00:00:19.480 --> 00:00:21.559 full Norman Rockwell. But today we are looking 00:00:21.559 --> 00:00:24.359 at a man who completely shatters that image. 00:00:24.559 --> 00:00:27.219 We're doing a deep dive into Charles Knowlton. 00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:30.559 Oh, this is a wild one. It really is. So Knowlton 00:00:30.559 --> 00:00:33.820 was born in 1800 and he was a respected physician 00:00:33.820 --> 00:00:36.740 by day, you know, riding a circuit of 30 towns 00:00:36.740 --> 00:00:39.560 to heal the sick. But by night. By night he was. 00:00:39.759 --> 00:00:42.719 a grave robber he was a grave robber a convicted 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:45.740 criminal and he was a philosopher who wrote books 00:00:45.740 --> 00:00:48.320 in a jail cell that completely challenged the 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:50.399 religious and legal structures of the 1800s he 00:00:50.399 --> 00:00:52.479 really lived two completely different lives simultaneously 00:00:53.289 --> 00:00:55.409 I mean, on one hand, he's the guy you call when 00:00:55.409 --> 00:00:57.729 your child has a fever. And on the other, he 00:00:57.729 --> 00:00:59.609 is what the religious establishment considered 00:00:59.609 --> 00:01:02.710 basically a moral terrorist. Right. And for this 00:01:02.710 --> 00:01:04.730 deep dive, we're pulling from a bunch of historical 00:01:04.730 --> 00:01:08.049 records, biographical details and court transcripts 00:01:08.049 --> 00:01:09.810 regarding his life and his medical practice. 00:01:10.209 --> 00:01:13.290 Because our mission today is really to unpack 00:01:13.290 --> 00:01:16.390 this guy. To figure out how he bridged that gap 00:01:16.390 --> 00:01:21.310 between medical curiosity and social taboo. Exactly. 00:01:21.390 --> 00:01:23.329 Because the irony is the thing that made him 00:01:23.329 --> 00:01:26.269 a terrorist, quote unquote, to these people wasn't 00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:28.709 violence. It was a little book. Literally a tiny 00:01:28.709 --> 00:01:31.250 pamphlet. Yeah, a pamphlet that sparked an international 00:01:31.250 --> 00:01:34.670 legal firestorm. But the kicker is the real explosion 00:01:34.670 --> 00:01:38.049 didn't even happen until 27 years after he was 00:01:38.049 --> 00:01:40.379 dead. Which is just the ultimate example of the 00:01:40.379 --> 00:01:42.319 Streisand effect. I mean, before Barbara Streisand 00:01:42.319 --> 00:01:44.780 was even born. Right. But to understand why a 00:01:44.780 --> 00:01:47.280 country doctor became such a lightning rod, we 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:48.599 kind of have to look at the world he was born 00:01:48.599 --> 00:01:51.359 into. So this is 1800. Medicine wasn't really 00:01:51.359 --> 00:01:53.980 science yet. No, it was a lot of guesswork. Guesswork, 00:01:54.019 --> 00:01:56.239 prayer, balancing humors. Heroic medicine was 00:01:56.239 --> 00:01:58.659 the standard, which usually meant bleeding you 00:01:58.659 --> 00:02:01.739 until you passed out or just dosing you with 00:02:01.739 --> 00:02:04.739 mercury. And into this world comes Charles Knowlton. 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:08.689 But he didn't start out as a rebel. If you look 00:02:08.689 --> 00:02:11.189 at the records from around 1818, when he was 00:02:11.189 --> 00:02:14.449 18, he was actually terrified of his own shadow. 00:02:14.569 --> 00:02:17.030 He was a massive hypochondriac. Yeah, extremely 00:02:17.030 --> 00:02:19.210 concerned about his health is the polite phrase 00:02:19.210 --> 00:02:21.110 the biographies use. Right. He was suffering 00:02:21.110 --> 00:02:23.229 from what they called gone -ness. Gone -ness. 00:02:23.490 --> 00:02:25.330 Yeah, this sort of debilitating weakness and 00:02:25.330 --> 00:02:27.729 anxiety. It totally consumed him. He thought 00:02:27.729 --> 00:02:30.509 he was dying every single day. And this is where 00:02:30.509 --> 00:02:33.289 the story takes a turn into what feels like science 00:02:33.289 --> 00:02:35.849 fiction to me. Because he doesn't go to a priest 00:02:35.849 --> 00:02:38.650 and he doesn't go to a standard doctor. He goes 00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:41.090 to Winchendon, Massachusetts to see a man named 00:02:41.090 --> 00:02:44.030 Richard Stewart. Who is not a doctor. No, not 00:02:44.030 --> 00:02:46.349 a doctor at all. He's described as a jack of 00:02:46.349 --> 00:02:48.629 all trades. You have to think of Stewart as that 00:02:48.629 --> 00:02:51.090 eccentric genius living on the edge of town. 00:02:51.210 --> 00:02:53.370 He was experimenting with electricity. Which 00:02:53.370 --> 00:02:56.449 in 1818 was basically magic. Effectively magic, 00:02:56.610 --> 00:02:59.110 yes. Mary Shelley had just published Frankenstein. 00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:02.169 The idea that electricity was the actual spark 00:03:02.169 --> 00:03:05.770 of life was heavily in the zeitgeist. So Stewart 00:03:05.770 --> 00:03:08.590 is building these galvanic batteries, these primitive 00:03:08.590 --> 00:03:11.129 electric machines in his house. Right. And young 00:03:11.129 --> 00:03:14.090 Knowlton goes there for essentially shock therapy. 00:03:14.949 --> 00:03:18.629 But, and I just love this detail, he finds a 00:03:18.629 --> 00:03:22.229 different kind of spark because he meets Stewart's 00:03:22.229 --> 00:03:25.189 daughter. Tabitha. Tabitha, yes. The records 00:03:25.189 --> 00:03:27.710 are actually a bit ambiguous on the causality 00:03:27.710 --> 00:03:30.289 here. Was it the galvanic shocks from Richard 00:03:30.289 --> 00:03:33.569 Stewart's machine that cured him? Or was it falling 00:03:33.569 --> 00:03:35.569 in love with Tabitha? I'm going to bet on the 00:03:35.569 --> 00:03:38.479 romance. Probably. But the result was binary. 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:41.080 He was instantly cured of his gone -ness. But 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:42.860 the exposure to Stewart's workshop did something 00:03:42.860 --> 00:03:46.080 else, too. It turned Knowlton toward materialism. 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:48.879 Yes. He saw that physical forces like electricity 00:03:48.879 --> 00:03:51.379 could literally change how we felt. It wasn't 00:03:51.379 --> 00:03:54.000 about demons or sin. It was about mechanism. 00:03:54.340 --> 00:03:56.479 It was biology and physics. Right. So he decides 00:03:56.479 --> 00:03:58.780 to become a doctor. He heads to Dartmouth for 00:03:58.780 --> 00:04:01.099 their medical lectures. Which was the standard 00:04:01.099 --> 00:04:03.240 education at the time. He sat in a lecture hall 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:05.800 for 14 weeks twice. You listen to a professor 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:07.430 talk about it. anatomy. But you didn't touch 00:04:07.430 --> 00:04:10.389 anything. No. You rarely touched a patient and 00:04:10.389 --> 00:04:12.469 you almost never touched a cadaver. And that 00:04:12.469 --> 00:04:14.430 just wasn't enough for Knowlton. He had this 00:04:14.430 --> 00:04:17.610 burning need to know how the human machine actually 00:04:17.610 --> 00:04:20.269 worked. But in the 1820s, there was a massive 00:04:20.269 --> 00:04:22.610 legal problem. The Anatomy Act hadn't passed 00:04:22.610 --> 00:04:25.810 yet. Exactly. Legally obtaining bodies for dissection 00:04:25.810 --> 00:04:28.750 was nearly impossible. So if you wanted to really 00:04:28.750 --> 00:04:31.720 learn anatomy. You had to become a resurrectionist. 00:04:31.740 --> 00:04:33.439 Meaning you had to dig them up yourself. You 00:04:33.439 --> 00:04:35.540 had to dig them up yourself. And we are not speaking 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:38.420 metaphorically here. We are talking about Knowlton 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:41.860 in the dead of winter. shoveling frozen dirt 00:04:41.860 --> 00:04:44.620 in a graveyard to drag a fresh corpse out of 00:04:44.620 --> 00:04:47.379 the ground. It is gruesome work. It is. But for 00:04:47.379 --> 00:04:50.240 him, it was completely necessary work. He fundamentally 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:52.240 believed you couldn't treat the living if you 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:54.040 didn't understand the dead. However, society 00:04:54.040 --> 00:04:57.139 strongly disagreed with that logic. Strongly. 00:04:57.160 --> 00:05:01.180 In 1824, right after he gets his M .D., he moves 00:05:01.180 --> 00:05:03.600 to Hawley, Massachusetts and almost immediately 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:06.019 gets arrested for illegal dissection. So he's 00:05:06.019 --> 00:05:08.660 a brand new doctor. The ink is barely dry on 00:05:08.660 --> 00:05:10.939 his diploma. And he's sitting in the Worcester 00:05:10.939 --> 00:05:13.240 County Jail for two months. Now, most people 00:05:13.240 --> 00:05:15.600 would take this as a sign to maybe conform a 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:18.699 little bit. Like, okay, society says no digging 00:05:18.699 --> 00:05:20.819 up bodies, I'll stop. Right, learn your lesson. 00:05:20.959 --> 00:05:23.920 But Knowlton uses the jail time to double down. 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:26.720 He becomes the jailhouse philosopher. Yes. He 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:28.579 isn't just sitting there sulking in his cell. 00:05:28.779 --> 00:05:32.079 He starts outlining a book. And it's not a medical 00:05:32.079 --> 00:05:35.379 textbook. It's a full philosophical treat. It's 00:05:35.379 --> 00:05:38.250 called Elements of Modern Materialism. I read 00:05:38.250 --> 00:05:40.250 some excerpts from this in the sources, and it 00:05:40.250 --> 00:05:44.149 is really heavy stuff for 1829. He's not talking 00:05:44.149 --> 00:05:45.829 about materialism in the sense of like buying 00:05:45.829 --> 00:05:47.870 nice things. No, he's talking about ontological 00:05:47.870 --> 00:05:49.850 materialism. Right. He's arguing that the universe 00:05:49.850 --> 00:05:52.329 is made of matter and absolutely nothing else. 00:05:52.509 --> 00:05:55.069 Which was a direct attack on religious dualism. 00:05:55.110 --> 00:05:57.569 That whole idea that the body and soul are separate. 00:05:57.670 --> 00:06:00.089 It went right after it. He did. Knowlton argued 00:06:00.089 --> 00:06:03.110 that what we call the soul or the mind is just 00:06:03.110 --> 00:06:05.089 a function of the brain and the nervous system. 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:08.819 He was effectively describing early behaviorism 00:06:08.819 --> 00:06:11.879 a century before it even became a field of psychology. 00:06:12.199 --> 00:06:14.480 He really believed that if you change the biology, 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:17.290 you change the person. Which tracks perfectly 00:06:17.290 --> 00:06:19.389 with his experience with that electricity machine 00:06:19.389 --> 00:06:22.470 back in Winchendon. Exactly. He felt his own 00:06:22.470 --> 00:06:25.750 soul, quote unquote, change because of physical 00:06:25.750 --> 00:06:29.069 shock. And he was trying to systemize that. But 00:06:29.069 --> 00:06:31.370 he wasn't just keeping a diary. He was incredibly 00:06:31.370 --> 00:06:34.870 ambitious. He actually quotes John Locke on the 00:06:34.870 --> 00:06:37.750 title page. He genuinely thought this book would 00:06:37.750 --> 00:06:40.269 make him the American John Locke. He really thought 00:06:40.269 --> 00:06:42.230 he had solved the riddle of human existence. 00:06:42.529 --> 00:06:45.029 And this leads to what I think is the most heartbreakingly 00:06:45.029 --> 00:06:48.170 human moment in his biography. The one horse 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:51.129 load. Oh, man. The one horse load. It's the summer 00:06:51.129 --> 00:06:54.750 of 1829. He has self -printed a thousand copies 00:06:54.750 --> 00:06:58.029 of elements of modern materialism. He loads them 00:06:58.029 --> 00:07:01.290 onto a wagon, a literal one horse load. And he 00:07:01.290 --> 00:07:03.589 travels from rural Massachusetts all the way 00:07:03.589 --> 00:07:05.829 to New York City. Just picture that journey for 00:07:05.829 --> 00:07:08.790 a second. It's summer. It's hot. He's dusty. 00:07:08.889 --> 00:07:11.189 He's dragging hundreds of pounds of paper across 00:07:11.189 --> 00:07:13.149 the entire state. Convinced that when he gets 00:07:13.149 --> 00:07:15.290 to the city, the intellectual elite are just 00:07:15.290 --> 00:07:18.310 going to embrace him. And instead. Silence. Absolute 00:07:18.310 --> 00:07:20.449 commercial failure. He didn't sell a single copy 00:07:20.449 --> 00:07:23.149 to a bookseller. Not one single copy. He had 00:07:23.149 --> 00:07:25.810 to drag that same heavy cart all the way back 00:07:25.810 --> 00:07:29.069 home. It's just a crushing defeat for an intellectual. 00:07:29.610 --> 00:07:32.269 He's screaming into the void and the void is 00:07:32.269 --> 00:07:34.829 just not listening. However, he didn't come back 00:07:34.829 --> 00:07:37.470 entirely empty -handed. He did meet some people 00:07:37.470 --> 00:07:39.550 in the city, some free thinkers. People like 00:07:39.550 --> 00:07:42.589 Robert Dale Owen. Yes, and that connection really 00:07:42.589 --> 00:07:45.370 mattered to him. He even named his second son 00:07:45.370 --> 00:07:48.269 Stephen Owen Knowlton after his new friend. So 00:07:48.269 --> 00:07:51.230 he returns to Massachusetts, bruised but not 00:07:51.230 --> 00:07:55.110 broken, and he moves to Ashfield in 1832 to restart 00:07:55.110 --> 00:07:57.470 his medical practice. And this is where the narrative 00:07:57.470 --> 00:08:00.490 shifts from eccentric failure to public enemy. 00:08:00.810 --> 00:08:03.259 Because in Ashfield, he meets his... absolute 00:08:03.259 --> 00:08:06.160 nemesis. The Reverend Mason Groszner. It is the 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:08.639 classic setup. The Second Great Awakening is 00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:11.300 in full swing. Religious fervor is extremely 00:08:11.300 --> 00:08:14.160 high everywhere. And Groszner is a new minister 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:17.360 who wants to stamp out infidelity and licentiousness 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:20.560 in his town. And who does he see? This materialist 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:22.639 doctor who used to dig up bodies and thinks the 00:08:22.639 --> 00:08:25.220 soul is just brain chemistry. But the funny thing 00:08:25.220 --> 00:08:27.259 is, Groszner didn't go after the philosophy book. 00:08:27.439 --> 00:08:29.480 Probably because nobody read it. Right, exactly. 00:08:29.740 --> 00:08:32.240 He went after something else entirely. Knowlton 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:34.860 had written a new book, a tiny book this time. 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:37.340 The Fruits of Philosophy or The Private Companion 00:08:37.340 --> 00:08:39.500 of Young Married People. And we need to be very 00:08:39.500 --> 00:08:42.240 clear about what this book actually was. It wasn't 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:44.559 pornography and it wasn't philosophy in the academic 00:08:44.559 --> 00:08:47.000 sense. No, it was a medical manual on reproduction. 00:08:47.179 --> 00:08:51.059 It covered infertility, impotence, and the physiology 00:08:51.059 --> 00:08:53.820 of conception based on the best science he had. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:57.620 But the real dynamite, the thing that caused 00:08:57.620 --> 00:09:00.600 all the trouble, was chapter two. Because Knowlton 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:03.779 provided a specific practical method for birth 00:09:03.779 --> 00:09:06.379 control. Right. Let's get into the weeds here 00:09:06.379 --> 00:09:08.039 a bit, because I know you listening are probably 00:09:08.039 --> 00:09:10.259 wondering what exactly was he prescribing in 00:09:10.259 --> 00:09:13.779 1832. This is way before latex condoms or the 00:09:13.779 --> 00:09:16.240 pill. He advocated for post -coital douching. 00:09:16.340 --> 00:09:19.200 Okay. He described using a syringe to wash out 00:09:19.200 --> 00:09:21.820 the vagina immediately after intercourse. And 00:09:21.820 --> 00:09:23.779 he was very specific about the chemical solutions 00:09:23.779 --> 00:09:26.019 you needed to use. Like what? He recommended 00:09:26.019 --> 00:09:29.210 solutions of Ellen Pearl ash. Or a decoction 00:09:29.210 --> 00:09:32.289 of white oak bark. Alum and white oak bark. So 00:09:32.289 --> 00:09:36.450 those are astringents. Right. His theory, which 00:09:36.450 --> 00:09:38.269 was based on the medical knowledge of the time, 00:09:38.309 --> 00:09:41.690 was that you needed to either kill the spermatic. 00:09:42.120 --> 00:09:44.679 or animalcules, as they called them, or mechanically 00:09:44.679 --> 00:09:46.700 flushed them out before conception occurred. 00:09:46.879 --> 00:09:48.840 And it's so important to note, he didn't write 00:09:48.840 --> 00:09:50.899 this to be a bestseller initially. He was just 00:09:50.899 --> 00:09:53.480 giving this to his own patients. He saw women 00:09:53.480 --> 00:09:56.500 in his practice who were physically broken by 00:09:56.500 --> 00:09:59.320 repeated pregnancies. Or families who literally 00:09:59.320 --> 00:10:01.419 couldn't afford to feed the children they already 00:10:01.419 --> 00:10:04.200 had. He saw birth control as a medical necessity. 00:10:04.620 --> 00:10:06.879 He did. He called it a check on population, sure. 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:09.279 But mostly it was about individual health. But 00:10:09.279 --> 00:10:11.399 you can't keep a secret like that in a small 00:10:11.399 --> 00:10:14.820 town. A printer named Abner Neeland in Boston 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:17.259 eventually got a hold of it and printed a proper 00:10:17.259 --> 00:10:19.519 edition. Widening the circulation completely. 00:10:19.860 --> 00:10:22.059 And once it was in print, Reverend Grubner finally 00:10:22.059 --> 00:10:24.639 had his weapon. And this wasn't a slap on the 00:10:24.639 --> 00:10:26.799 wrist like the grave robbing charge. The state 00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:29.519 came down really hard. He was prosecuted in Taunton, 00:10:29.519 --> 00:10:31.620 Massachusetts, and then he was imprisoned in 00:10:31.620 --> 00:10:34.539 East Cambridge. And we need to clarify the conditions 00:10:34.539 --> 00:10:36.779 here. This wasn't just standard jail time. The 00:10:36.779 --> 00:10:40.080 sentence was hard labor. Yeah, in 1830s Massachusetts 00:10:40.080 --> 00:10:43.720 hard labor usually meant stone breaking or working 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:46.279 in the prison workshops under absolute silence. 00:10:46.539 --> 00:10:49.179 It was explicitly designed to break you physically 00:10:49.179 --> 00:10:52.179 and mentally. For three months this educated 00:10:52.179 --> 00:10:55.059 physician was treated like a common felon. And 00:10:55.059 --> 00:10:58.139 the charge was essentially obscenity, corrupting 00:10:58.139 --> 00:11:00.960 the morals of youth. The authorities were terrified 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:03.179 that if people could have sex without consequences, 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:06.460 meaning children, the entire moral fabric of 00:11:06.460 --> 00:11:08.740 society would just dissolve. It's the separation 00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:11.379 of sex from procreation. That was the real heresy 00:11:11.379 --> 00:11:14.659 to them. Absolutely. But Knowlton was incredibly 00:11:14.659 --> 00:11:17.460 stubborn. Even after surviving the hard labor, 00:11:17.639 --> 00:11:20.000 he just didn't stop. He was dragged into other 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.580 trials, too, like Abner Nealon's blasphemy trial 00:11:22.580 --> 00:11:25.379 in 1838. His work was a central issue there. 00:11:25.559 --> 00:11:27.759 But he kept fighting Grosvenor back in Ashfield. 00:11:28.190 --> 00:11:30.309 It was an ongoing feud. And eventually he won. 00:11:30.490 --> 00:11:32.429 Not in the Supreme Court, but in the court of 00:11:32.429 --> 00:11:34.730 public opinion. Yeah. Two separate local juries 00:11:34.730 --> 00:11:36.590 in Franklin County refused to convict him in 00:11:36.590 --> 00:11:38.710 later attempts. Why do you think that was? Was 00:11:38.710 --> 00:11:40.370 it just that they liked him as their doctor? 00:11:40.669 --> 00:11:43.110 I really think so. You have to remember, he was 00:11:43.110 --> 00:11:45.169 the guy who delivered their babies and set their 00:11:45.169 --> 00:11:47.769 broken bones. Right. He was the beloved physician, 00:11:47.950 --> 00:11:50.809 despite the heresy. He had a ride that covered 00:11:50.809 --> 00:11:54.610 30 towns. If you were sick in western Massachusetts... 00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:57.539 Knowlton was the guy you wanted. He was indispensable. 00:11:58.019 --> 00:12:00.580 He was. And eventually Reverend Grosvenor realized 00:12:00.580 --> 00:12:03.100 he just couldn't run Knowlton out of town. So 00:12:03.100 --> 00:12:05.440 Grosvenor left instead. He did. He actually quit 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:07.639 the ministry entirely and became an insurance 00:12:07.639 --> 00:12:10.419 agent. Which is just a career pivot for the ages. 00:12:10.759 --> 00:12:14.480 Truly. Meanwhile, Knowlton thrives. He stays 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:17.240 in Ashfield. He becomes highly respected and 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:19.480 even contributes articles to the Boston Medical 00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:21.539 and Surgical Journal. And he starts organizing. 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:25.620 In 1845, he is instrumental in founding the Friends 00:12:25.620 --> 00:12:28.080 of Mental Liberty in Greenfield. Which is such 00:12:28.080 --> 00:12:30.279 a fascinating group. It's a free thought society 00:12:30.279 --> 00:12:32.720 right in the middle of a rural farming community. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:35.039 And their constitution is incredibly progressive. 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:38.179 I mean, it defends the right to free inquiry 00:12:38.179 --> 00:12:42.139 into all religious truth. But there's one specific 00:12:42.139 --> 00:12:44.759 clause that really jumps out. The gender equality 00:12:44.759 --> 00:12:48.929 clause. Yes. The Constitution explicitly stated 00:12:48.929 --> 00:12:52.029 that female members of this society shall enjoy 00:12:52.029 --> 00:12:54.570 the same rights and privileges as male members. 00:12:54.750 --> 00:12:57.490 That is radical for 1845. I mean, this is three 00:12:57.490 --> 00:12:59.570 years before the Seneca Falls Convention even 00:12:59.570 --> 00:13:01.610 happened. But it makes perfect sense, though. 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:04.639 His entire medical contribution with birth control 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:07.179 was about giving women control over their own 00:13:07.179 --> 00:13:09.559 bodies. So it follows that he would view them 00:13:09.559 --> 00:13:12.179 as autonomous political equals too. Exactly. 00:13:12.179 --> 00:13:14.480 So Charles Knowlton dies a few years later in 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:16.860 1850. He's only 49 years old. He leaves behind 00:13:16.860 --> 00:13:19.360 a legacy as a good doctor and a local troublemaker. 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:21.740 And if the story ended right there, he'd just 00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:24.580 be a footnote. A weird curiosity in the local 00:13:24.580 --> 00:13:26.700 archives. But the story doesn't end there at 00:13:26.700 --> 00:13:29.100 all. The little book, The Fruits of Philosophy, 00:13:29.340 --> 00:13:32.039 kept circulating underground. It drifted across 00:13:32.039 --> 00:13:35.419 the Atlantic to England. And 27 years after Knowlton 00:13:35.419 --> 00:13:37.840 is in the ground, that book absolutely explodes. 00:13:38.159 --> 00:13:41.519 This is the London trial of 1877. This is the 00:13:41.519 --> 00:13:44.360 moment the Streisand effect goes completely nuclear. 00:13:44.639 --> 00:13:46.779 So set the scene for you listening. We're in 00:13:46.779 --> 00:13:49.220 Victorian London. It is deeply conservative and 00:13:49.220 --> 00:13:54.440 publicly very prudish. Two famous secularists. 00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:57.500 Charles Bradlow and Annie Besant decide they 00:13:57.500 --> 00:13:59.600 want to challenge the censorship laws. They need 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:02.980 a test case. They need a book that is medically 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:06.259 sound, but legally dangerous. And they pick Knowlton's 00:14:06.259 --> 00:14:09.419 book. They pick the fruits of philosophy. They 00:14:09.419 --> 00:14:11.919 republish it with the specific intent of getting 00:14:11.919 --> 00:14:14.779 arrested just to test the law. And the authorities 00:14:14.779 --> 00:14:17.470 took the bait. Hook, line and sinker. Yeah. The 00:14:17.470 --> 00:14:19.710 trial was an absolute sensation. It was on the 00:14:19.710 --> 00:14:21.950 front page of every newspaper. You had prosecutors 00:14:21.950 --> 00:14:24.370 reading excerpts of Knowlton's douching methods 00:14:24.370 --> 00:14:26.629 in open court, arguing that it would destroy 00:14:26.629 --> 00:14:29.049 the purity of English women. And what did that 00:14:29.049 --> 00:14:32.210 do to the sales? Oh, man. Before the trial, the 00:14:32.210 --> 00:14:34.950 book sold maybe 700 copies a year. It was a very 00:14:34.950 --> 00:14:37.330 niche pamphlet. Right. Because of the trial publicity, 00:14:37.570 --> 00:14:41.730 in just three months, it sold 125 ,000 copies. 00:14:42.029 --> 00:14:44.590 That is staggering. It became an overnight bestseller. 00:14:44.730 --> 00:14:48.539 It broke the dam. That trial effectively launched 00:14:48.539 --> 00:14:50.700 the modern birth control movement in the UK. 00:14:50.899 --> 00:14:53.820 Because after the trial, Annie Besant wrote her 00:14:53.820 --> 00:14:56.419 own birth control manual, cementing the movement 00:14:56.419 --> 00:14:59.179 that Knowlton had helped start. The Malthusian 00:14:59.179 --> 00:15:02.120 lead was formed. The birth rate in England actually 00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:05.240 began to drop significantly in the years following 00:15:05.240 --> 00:15:07.659 that trial. And was all because the government... 00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:11.059 tried to ban a book written by a dead country 00:15:11.059 --> 00:15:13.840 doctor from Ashfield, Massachusetts. It really 00:15:13.840 --> 00:15:17.120 proves that you cannot arrest an idea whose time 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:20.639 has come. Yeah. Knowlton was a materialist. He 00:15:20.639 --> 00:15:22.860 believed in the physical reality of the body. 00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:25.659 He looked at the problem of unwanted pregnancy 00:15:25.659 --> 00:15:29.879 not as a sin, but as a biological mechanism that 00:15:29.879 --> 00:15:32.120 could be managed practically. And in the end, 00:15:32.139 --> 00:15:34.279 that practicality won out. It's amazing to think 00:15:34.279 --> 00:15:36.419 about that journey. From the 18 -year -old kid 00:15:36.419 --> 00:15:38.820 terrified of his own heartbeat, cured by a homemade 00:15:38.820 --> 00:15:42.039 electric machine, to the grave robber. To the 00:15:42.039 --> 00:15:44.620 prisoner breaking rock. With the posthumous godfather 00:15:44.620 --> 00:15:46.899 of the birth control revolution. It's a true 00:15:46.899 --> 00:15:49.159 testament to the power of dangerous knowledge. 00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:51.820 Which brings us to a final thought for you listening 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:54.940 right now. We look back at the fruits of philosophy 00:15:54.940 --> 00:15:58.039 today, a book about douching with white oak bark, 00:15:58.200 --> 00:16:00.639 and it seems almost quaint that people went to 00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:03.919 prison at hard labor over it. But every era has 00:16:03.919 --> 00:16:06.580 its forbidden knowledge. The authorities always 00:16:06.580 --> 00:16:08.919 have a line that cannot be crossed. Exactly. 00:16:09.259 --> 00:16:12.279 So what is the fruits of philosophy of our time? 00:16:12.399 --> 00:16:14.799 What is the information or the technology or 00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:16.879 the scientific truth that is currently being 00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:19.539 suppressed or demonized today? And if history 00:16:19.539 --> 00:16:22.340 is any guide? How does that suppression actually 00:16:22.340 --> 00:16:24.559 guarantee that it will eventually spread to the 00:16:24.559 --> 00:16:26.840 masses and change the world? That is definitely 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:28.559 the question to keep you up at night. Thanks 00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:30.299 for joining us on this deep dive. We'll see you 00:16:30.299 --> 00:16:30.620 next time.