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A Discovery

About This Item

  • Title: A Discovery
  • Date: 10 February 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00719
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 10 February 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Noelle Bates Thara Michaelis Kevin McMullen Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "A Discovery." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00719.xml (TEI)
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A DISCOVERY.—

The Phrenological Journal, (published by Messrs. Fowler and Wells,1 no humbugs, by the way), announces in its last issue a discovery whose importance will excuse our seeming indelicacy in giving it a wider publicity:

We are in possession of the knowledge of a physiological law, by the application of which, any female may prevent conception at will, without injury or inconvenience, and without in any way interfering with the conjugal relations. The process is as simple, almost, as the act of willing; but for obvious reasons we cannot publish it. Indigent and sickly married females, who do not desire, and should not have children (and those alone) may apply to us “privately and confidentially.”

Notes:

1. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811–1896) and his brother-in-law Samuel R. Wells (1809–1887) were practitioners of phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the nineteenth century. They owned and operated the Phrenological Depot on Broadway, which contained phrenological materials and books and offered phrenological readings. They also operated a printing business and were responsible for printing the expanded second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856). In addition, they published Life Illustrated, The American Phrenological Journal, and The Water Cure Journal. Whitman contributed to both Life Illustrated and The Phrenological Journal. [back]

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