The Fruits of Philosophy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Fruits of Philosophy is a book by Charles Knowlton.
In 1832, Knowlton moved his family and medical practice to Ashfield, Mass. A year later, the town’s new minister, Mason Grosvenor, began a campaign against “infidelity and licentiousness,” targeting Knowlton as its source. Knowlton had been showing his patients a little book called The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People[1], which he wrote to explain a method of birth control he’d developed.
Knowlton was prosecuted and fined in Taunton, Mass for the book. Abner Kneeland printed a second edition of Fruits of Philosophy in Boston in 1832, allowing it a wider circulation than the few closely guarded copies Knowlton had been lending to patients. This led to Knowlton’s imprisonment in Cambridge at “hard labor” for three months, and was a central issue in Kneeland’s blasphemy trial in 1838. Reverend Grosvenor filed a complaint against Knowlton in Franklin County, but after two juries failed to convict him, the charges were dropped. Grosvenor left Ashfield, and became a general agent for the Aetna insurance company.
