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On a recent visit, the Library Company of Philadelphia\u2019s<\/a> curator of printed books, Rachel A. D\u2019Agostino, gently removed the delicate 1832 edition of Charles Knowlton\u2019s Fruits of Philosophy from a matchbox-size box within a box. <\/p>\n The two-and-a-half-inch-tall book\u2019s exquisite packaging was like that of a 1.5 oz. bottle of vintage French perfume. <\/p>\n But unlike Chanel N\u00b05, there were no fancy logos or recognizable typeface on the weathered encasing; just a small sticker with its title. Next to the first edition print were two additional volumes published in 1834 and 1839, respectively. <\/p>\n Both a tad bigger, yet small enough to fit discreetly on a chatelaine<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cFruits of Philosophy is a 19th-century manual about birth control,\u201d D\u2019Agostino whispered like she was sharing a confidence, not simply using her inside-of-the-library voice. <\/p>\n \u201dEverything about it is meant to be hidden, a secret. There is no name of the printer, or publisher. Knowlton\u2019s name is not even there. Everybody knows this book is a potential problem and they are saying, \u2018We think this is important and at the same time we have to keep it hidden.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Fruits of Philosophy is one of 1,500 19th-century clandestine hardcovers that are part of the Library Company\u2019s most recent set of acquisitions from respected medical historian, author, and avid book collector Charles E. Rosenberg<\/a>. Over the last 40 years, he has donated more than 16,000 books to America\u2019s first independent lending library. <\/p>\n Rosenberg\u2019s own scholarly texts about cholera, mental health, and religion in science are widely read and referenced. However, these bound works donated by him were expected to be tucked away in secret compartments and buried in the bottom of bedroom drawers when they were first published upward of 200 years ago. <\/p>\n Why? Because they are all about sex. The books taught denizens of centuries past about sex and their bodies.<\/p>\n Not scintillating, bodice-ripping sex, but scandalous enough.<\/p>\n Books about every conceivable unmentionable<\/p>\n Americans didn\u2019t go to the doctor for regular checkups before the mid-20th century, let alone talk to their MDs about their sexual health. Discussions about sex \u2014 even between husband and wife \u2014 were taboo.<\/p>\n So, an entire underground economy of books and pamphlets printed to help people navigate their sexual lives emerged. They were naughty at best, scandalous at worst, and distributed through the kinds of secret channels we think of today as the dark web. Despite their nefarious nature, people sought them out even when the tips \u2014 especially the birth control hacks in Fruits \u2014 would be considered dicey by today\u2019s standards, <\/p>\n \u201cThey helped people manage their bodies,\u201d said Rosenberg, whose collection spans from the early 18th- to the mid-20th century. \u201cAbortion, birth control, masturbation, anything involving sexual pleasure was controversial in polite company.\u201d <\/p>\n Rosenberg\u2019s provocative collection covers every conceivable unmentionable from sterility to STDs.<\/p>\n Young wives learned what was expected of them in the marriage bed from sneaking reads of William H. Walling\u2019s 1904 hardcover, Sexology. Men discovered why their virility might be waning through covert perusals of George Howard Jones\u2019 1881 manual The Science of Life, or, Self-Preservation<\/a>, whose cover hid the book\u2019s real title and was labeled as Know Thyself.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps, the biblical reference on the cover hints at what the book was really about without telling you directly that it\u2019s about sex,\u201d D\u2019Agostino suggested.<\/p>\n There are also several editions of the 18th-century masturbation treatise Onania: Or, the Heinous Sin of Sexual Pollution<\/a> in the Rosenberg donation. In keeping with the mores of the times, the anonymous pamphlet damns the act but also entertains questions from anonymous readers curious about their urges. <\/p>\n \u201cThe conversations might have been forbidden, but people were still clearly talking,\u201d D\u2019Agostino said. \u201cIt really makes you wonder where these conversations started. Were people asking about themselves, or their teenage sons. \u2026 These books give us so many hints about what was important in society, what we shouldn\u2019t talk about, but what was talked about anyway.\u201d <\/p>\n Rosenberg\u2019s favorite are the 35 copies of Aristotle\u2019s Masterpiece<\/a>. First published in 1684, Aristotle\u2019s Masterpiece \u2014 which, by the way was not written by the Greek philosopher \u2014 is a midwifery and sexual education manual that among other things acknowledged that women do enjoy sex. <\/p>\n Illustrations, although rudimentary, firmly place the manual in the naughty category. <\/p>\n \u201cI was very fascinated by Aristotle\u2019s Masterpiece,” Rosenberg said. \u201cThere is just something very romantic about rare items.\u201d <\/p>\n A subset of \u2018popular medicine\u2019<\/p>\n Rosenberg\u2019s donated sexual health primers from yesteryear are a subset of his larger collection of hundreds of books on \u201cpopular medicine,\u201d a term he\u2019s lauded in academic circles for coining. <\/p>\n Scientific discoveries made during the Age of Enlightenment challenged the belief that any ailment \u2014 whether a stomach ache or a sprained finger \u2014 was a punishment from God. As the study of medicine found its way to the halls of universities<\/a>, a new genre of reading material, blending home remedies with the popular science of the day, came on the scene. Like the wellness gurus of today. <\/p>\n In the 19th century, such reading material teetered between blindly obeying the will of God and understanding the needs of everyday people. <\/p>\n Which is why the popular science in sex subset is the most radical part of Rosenberg\u2019s collection. <\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t interested in the high culture of medicine,\u201d he said. \u201cI was interested in the questions ordinary people had about how their bodies as it related to their health.\u201d <\/p>\n In 1962, while a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Rosenberg\u2019s most famous work, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866<\/a>, was published by the University of Chicago Press. When the first cholera outbreak hit in 1832, people thought contracting the cholera bug, which caused diarrhea and dehydration, was a punishment from God. <\/p>\n During the 1849 cholera epidemic, physician John Snow determined the disease spread through contaminated drinking water. When cholera reemerged in 1866, it was treated as a public health issue. Rosenberg\u2019s book examined the societal shift\u2019s impact on medicine and personal hygiene. <\/p>\n \u201cBy this time I already had a great collection of popular science books that I accumulated through my research,\u201d Rosenberg said. \u201cI was a nutty collector.\u201d<\/p>\n Books, books, books<\/p>\n Rosenberg moved to Center City<\/a> in 1963 to take a job as an assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>\u2019s history department. <\/p>\n Shortly after coming to Philadelphia, he befriended Edwin Wolf II<\/a>, the rare book aficionado and bombastic director of the Library Company. Wolf is credited with breathing life into the struggling institution in the 1950s. <\/p>\n Rosenberg gave his first set of books to Wolf in the 1960s. <\/p>\n \u201cI liked the notion of it being the oldest surviving colonial library that wasn\u2019t a university,\u201d Rosenberg, 89, said. \u201cIt was associated with Ben Franklin, the Declaration, \u2026 It was rich with American history.\u201d <\/p>\n He spent the next 40 years of his life researching, collecting, writing, and giving away books about popular science. <\/p>\n For his 1968 book The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau. Psychiatry and the Law in the Gilded Age,<\/a> he read hundreds of scientific and popular science books on insanity. He read a cadre of books on spirituality and medicine for his 1976 collection of essays No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought<\/a>. <\/p>\n Each book, essay, or paper he wrote meant he amassed books on a new genre of popular science, which would eventually make their way to the Library Company \u2014 usually after a major move. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I moved from Center City to West Philly, I gave a bunch of stuff to the library,\u201d Rosenberg, who became chair of the department of history and sociology at Penn in 1991, recalled. \u201cThen I moved to Merion and gave even more books.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2001, Rosenberg\u2019s wife, Penn professor Drew Gilpin Faust<\/a>, was appointed the first dean of Harvard University\u2019s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, prompting Rosenberg to donate a slew of books to the Library Company. (Faust became Harvard\u2019s first female president in 2007 and served as its leader until 2018.) <\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Library Company shareholders have voted for its merger with Temple University<\/a><\/p>\n Rosenberg kept donating books through his time on Harvard\u2019s faculty and after his retirement in 2004. The popular sex collection donation, made in the spring of 2024, is his latest batch. <\/p>\n He held on to them the longest, he said, because he was toying with the idea of writing a book that looked at how sexual agency developed through the centuries and would discuss topics like abortion and masturbation. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I gave up on that project, I decided to part with the books,\u201d said Rosenberg, who is now a Library Company emeritus trustee. <\/p>\n Sex in the stacks<\/p>\n The Rosenberg acquisitions are extra special, D\u2019Agostino said, because they provide a glimpse into how people actually lived, thought about, and had sex. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Library Company didn\u2019t acquire these books on their first run,\u201d D\u2019Agostino said. \u201cWe bought for the gentleman, the most upstanding people at the community. They would have come here looking for medical texts, but not books about managing their sex lives.\u201d <\/p>\n Today, Rosenberg\u2019s donations are nestled in the stacks on the top floors of the Locust Street building that smells of old leather. <\/p>\n