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No. 11 IN THE PHYSICIANS' AND STUDENTS' READY REFERENCE SERIES
HISTORY OF CIRCUMCISION FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT.
MORAL AND PHYSICAL REASONS FOR ITS PERFORMANCE, WITH A HISTORY OF
EUNUCHISM, HERMAPHRODISM, ETC., AND OF THE DIFFERENT OPERATIONS
PRACTICED UPON THE PREPUCE.
BY
P. C. REMONDINO, M.D.
(JEFFERSON),
Member of the American Medical Association, of the American Public
Health Association, of the San Diego County Medical Society, of the
State Board of Health of California, and of the Board of Health of the
City of San Diego; Vice-President of California State Medical Society
and of Southern California Medical Society, etc.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON:
F. A. DAVIS, PUBLISHER.
1891.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by
F. A. DAVIS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
Philadelphia Pa., U. S. A.:
The Medical Bulletin Printing House,
1231 Filbert Street.
[Illustration: HEBRAIC CIRCUMCISION]
PREFACE.
In ancient Egypt the performance of circumcision was at one time limited
to the priesthood, who, in addition to the cleanliness that this
operation imparted to that class, added the shaving of the whole body as
a means of further purification. The nobility, royalty, and the higher
warrior class seem to have adopted circumcision as well, either as a
hygienic precaution or as an aristocratic prerogative and insignia.
Among the Greeks we find a like practice, and we are told that in the
times of Pythagoras the Greek philosophers were also circumcised,
although we find no mention that the operation went beyond the
intellectual class. In the United States, France, and in England, there
is a class which also observe circumcision as a hygienic precaution,
where, from my personal observation, I have found that circumcision is
thoroughly practiced in every male member of many of the families of the
class,--this being the physician class. In general conversation with
physicians on this subject, it has really been surprising to see the
large number who have had themselves circumcised, either through the
advice of some college professor while attending lectures or as a result
of their own subsequent convictions when engaged in actual practice and
daily coming in contact both with the benefits that are to be derived in
the way of a better physical, mental, and moral health, as well as with
the many dangers and disadvantages that follow the uncircumcised,--the
latter being probably the most frequent incentive and determinator,--as
in many of these latter examples the operation of circumcision, with its
pains, annoyances, and possible and probable dangers, sink into the most
trifling insignificance in comparison to some of the results that are
daily observed as the tribute that is paid by the unlucky and unhappy
wearer of a prepuce for the privilege of possessing such an appendage.
There is one thing that must be admitted concerning circumcision: this
being that, among medical men or men of ordinary intelligence who have
had the operation performed, instead of being dissatisfied, they have
extended the advantages they have themselves received, by having those
in their charge likewise operated upon. The practice is now much more
prevalent than is supposed, as there are many Christian families where
males are regularly circumcised soon after birth, who simply do so as a
hygienic measure.
For the benefit of these, who may congratulate themselves upon the
dangers and annoyances that they and their families have escaped, and
for the benefit of those who would run into these dangers but for timely
warning, this book has been especially written. To my professional
brothers the book will prove a source of instruction and recreation,
for, while it contains a lot of pathology regarding the moral and
physical reasons why circumcision should be performed, which might be as
undigestible as a mess of Boston brown bread and beans on a French
stomach, I have endeavored to make that part of the book readable and
interesting. The operative chapter will be particularly useful and
interesting to physicians, as I have there given a careful and impartial
review of all the operative procedures,--from the most simple to the
most elaborate,--besides paying more than particular attention to the
subject of after-dressings. The part that relates to the natural history
of man will interest all manner of people. I regret that the tabular
statistics are not to be had, but in this regard we must use our best
judgment from the material we have on hand; at any rate, I have tried to
furnish a sufficiency of facts, so that, unless the reader is too
overexacting, he will not find much difficulty in arriving at a
conclusion on the subject.
P. C. REMONDINO, M.D.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, 1891.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE, iii
INTRODUCTION, 1
CHAPTER I.
ANTIQUITY OF CIRCUMCISION, 21
CHAPTER II.
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF CIRCUMCISION, 28
CHAPTER III.
SPREAD OF CIRCUMCISION, 34
CHAPTER IV.
CIRCUMCISION AMONG SAVAGE TRIBES, 42
CHAPTER V.
INFIBULATION, MUZZLING, AND OTHER CURIOUS PRACTICES, 46
CHAPTER VI.
ATTEMPTS TO ABOLISH CIRCUMCISION, 63
CHAPTER VII.
MIRACLES AND THE HOLY PREPUCE, 70
CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY OF EMASCULATION, CASTRATION, AND EUNUCHISM, 82
CHAPTER IX.
PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EUNUCHISM AND
MEDICINE, 105
CHAPTER X.
HERMAPHRODISM AND HYPOSPADIAS, 117
CHAPTER XI.
RELIGIO MEDICI, 134
CHAPTER XII.
HEBRAIC CIRCUMCISION, 143
CHAPTER XIII.
MEZIZAH, THE FOURTH OR OBJECTIONABLE ACT OF SUCTION, 150
CHAPTER XIV.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF CIRCUMCISION? 161
CHAPTER XV.
PREDISPOSITION TO AND EXEMPTION AND IMMUNITY FROM
DISEASE, 183
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PREPUCE, SYPHILIS, AND PHTHISIS, 187
CHAPTER XVII.
SOME REASONS FOR BEING CIRCUMCISED, 200
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PREPUCE AS AN OUTLAW, AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE GLANS, 206
CHAPTER XIX.
IS THE PREPUCE A NATURAL PHYSIOLOGICAL APPENDAGE? 217
CHAPTER XX.
THE PREPUCE, PHIMOSIS, AND CANCER, 226
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PREPUCE AND GANGRENE OF THE PENIS, 236
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PREPUCE, CALCULI, AND OTHER ANNOYANCES, 248
CHAPTER XXIII.
REFLEX NEUROSES AND THE PREPUCE, 254
CHAPTER XXIV.
DYSURIA, ENURESIS, AND RETENTION OF URINE, 275
CHAPTER XXV.
GENERAL SYSTEMIC DISEASES INDUCED BY THE PREPUCE, 284
CHAPTER XXVI.
SURGICAL OPERATIONS PERFORMED ON THE PREPUCE, 302
NOTES TO TEXT, 323
WORKS AND AUTHORITIES QUOTED, 336
INDEX, 339
INTRODUCTION.
This book is the amplification of a paper, the subject of which was, "A
Plea for Circumcision; or, the Dangers that Arise from the Prepuce,"
which was read at the meeting of the Southern California Medical
Society, at Pasadena, in December, 1889. The material gathered for that
paper was more than could be used in the ordinary limits of a society
paper; it was gathered and ready for use, and this suggested its
arrangement into book form. The subject of the paper was itself
suggested by a long and personal observation of the changes made in man
by circumcision. From the individual observation of cases, it was but
natural to wish to enlarge the scope of our observation and comparison;
this naturally led to a study of the physical characteristics of the
only race that could practically be used for the purpose. This race is
the Jewish race. On carefully studying into the subject, I plainly saw
that much of their longevity could consistently be ascribed to their
more practical humanitarianism, in caring for their poor, their sick, as
well as in their generous provision for their unfortunate aged people.
The social fabric of the Jewish family is also more calculated to
promote long life, as, strangely as it may seem, family veneration and
family love and attachment are far more strong and practical among this
people than among Christians, this sentiment not being even as strong in
the Christian races as it is in the Chinese or Japanese. It certainly
forms as much of a part of the teachings of Christianity as it does of
Judaism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, only Christians, as a mass, have
practically forgotten it. The occupation followed by the Jews also in a
certain degree favors longevity, and the influence on heredity induced
by all these combined conditions goes for something. But it is not alone
in the matter of simple longevity--although that implies
considerable--that the Jewish race is found to be better situated.
Actual observations show them to be exempt from many diseases which
affect other races; so that it is not only that they recover more
promptly, but that they are not, as a class, subjected to the loss of
time by illness, or to the consequent sufferings due to illness or
disease, in anything like or like ratio with other people.
There is also a less tendency to criminality, debauchery, and
intemperance in the race; this, again, can in a measure be ascribed to
their family influence, which even in our day has not lost that
patriarchal influence which tinges the home or family life in the Old
Testament. Crimes against the person or property committed by Jews are
rare. They likewise do not figure in either police courts or
penitentiary records; they are not inmates of our poor-houses, but, what
is also singular, they are never accused of many silly crimes, such as
indecent exposures, assaults on young girls; nor do they figure in any
such exposures as the one recently made by the _Pall Mall Gazette_.
After allowing all that, which we can, in its fullest limit, to
religion, family, or social habit, there is still a wide margin to be
accounted for. This has naturally let the inquiry, followed in the
course of this book, into a careful review of the Jewish people; into
their religion and its character, its relation to other creeds, and to
the world's history; into their many wanderings, and into the
dispersion, and we have even been obliged to follow them into the midst
of the people among whom they have become nationed, to try, if possible,
to find the cause of this racial difference in health, resistance to
disease, decay, and death. It has been necessary, in following out the
research, to give a condensed _resume_ of the religious, political, and
social condition of the Jewish commonwealth, which, although in a state
of dispersion, still exists. I need offer no apology for the extended
notice this has received in the course of the book. We read with
increasing interest either Hallam or May, Buckle or Guizot, through the
spasmodic, halting, retrograding, advancing, erratic, aimless, and
accidental phases that England has plowed through, from the days of
goutless, simple, and chaste, but barbarian England of the Saxons, to
the present civilized, enlightened, gouty, "Darkest England" of General
Booth; and, after all is said and done, we are no wiser in any practical
resulting good. We simply know that the English people, so to speak,
have, as it were, gone through the figures of some social aspects, as if
dancing the "Lancers," with its forward and back movements, gallop,
etc., and have finally sat down, better dressed and better housed, but
in an acquired state of moral and physical degeneration. The Briton of
Queen Victoria is not the Briton of Queen Boadicea, either morally or
physically. On the other hand, the system of sociological tables adopted
by Herbert Spencer would have but little to record for some six thousand
years--either in religion, morals, or physique--as making any changes in
the history of that simple people which, in the mountainous regions of
Ur, in distant Armenia, started on its pilgrimage of life and racial
existence; in one branch of the family--that of Ishmael--the changes to
be recorded are so invisible that its descendants may really be said to
live to-day as they lived then. So that I do not feel that I need to
apologize for the space I have given to this subject in the course of
the book. The causes that make these racial distinctions should be of
interest alike to the moralist, theologist, sociologist, and to the
physician.
Ecclesiastical writers and moralists, as well as writers of fiction or
dramatizers, can write on anything they please, and it is eagerly taken
up and read by the people generally, either of high or low degree,
alike; and somehow these people seem never to require an apology on the
part of the author, for having attempted rapes, seductions, or even
unavoidable fornication committed through the leaves of the story, or
having it imaginably take place between acts on the stage. But if the
physician writes a book touching anything connected with the generative
functions, and with the best intent and for the good of humanity, he is
expected to make some prefatory apology. He is supposed to address a
public who all of a sudden have become intensely moral and extremely
sensitive in their modesty. Why things are thus I cannot explain. They
are so, nevertheless. From the time that the celebrated Astruc wrote his
treatise on female diseases, near the end of the seventeenth
century,--who felt compelled by the extreme modesty of the people in
this particular--but who, outside of medicine, were about as virtuous as
the average Tabby or Tom cats in the midnight hour--to write the chapter
touching on nymphomania in Latin, so as not to shock the morbidly
sensitive modesty of the French nobility, who then enjoyed _Le Droit de
cuissage_,--down through to Bienville, who wrote the first extended work
on nymphomania, and Tissot, who first broached the subject and the
danger of Onanism, all have felt that they must stop on the threshold
and "apologize." Tissot, however, seemed to possess a robust and a plain
Hippocratic mind, and as he apologized he could not help but see the
ridiculousness of so doing, as in the preface to his work we find the
following: "Shall we remain silent on so important a subject? By no
means. The sacred authors, the Fathers of the Church, who present their
thoughts in living words, and ecclesiastical authors have not felt that
silence was best. I have followed their example, and shall exclaim, with
St. Augustine, 'If what I have written scandalizes any prudish persons,
let them rather accuse the turpitude of their own thoughts than the
words I have been obliged to use.'"
For my part, I think that people who can go to the theatre and enjoy "As
in a Looking-Glass," and witness some of the satyrical or billy-goat
traits of humanity so graphically exhibited in "La Tosca," with evident
satisfaction; or attend the more robust plays of "Virginius" or of
"Galba, the Gladiator," with all its suggestions of the Caesarian
section, and the lust and the fornications of an intensely animal Roman
empress, without the destruction of their moral equilibrium or tending
to induce in them a disposition to commit a rape on the first met,--I
think such people can be safely intrusted to read this book.
And as to the reading public, there are but few general readers who
could honestly plead an ignorance of the "Decameron," Balzac, La
Fontaine, "Heptameron," Crebillon _fils_, or of matter-of-fact Monsieur
le Docteur Maitre Rabelais,--works which, more or less, carry a moral
instruction in every tale, which, like the tales of the "Malice of
Women," in the unexpurged edition of the literal translation of the
"Arabian Nights," contains much more of practical moral lessons, even if
in the flowery and warm, spiced language of the Orient, than any
supposed nastiness, on account of which they are classed among the
prohibited. To these, and the readers of Amelie Rives's books, or other
intensely realistic literature, I need not imitate the warning of
Ansonius, who warned his readers on the threshold of a part of his book
to "stop and consider well their strength before proceeding with its
lecture." Metaphorically speaking, the general theatre-going, or modern
literature-reading public, can be considered pretty callous and morally
bullet proof. I shall therefore make no apology.
Some fault may, perhaps, be found with some of the occasional style of
the book, or with some of the subjects used to illustrate a principle.
To the extremely wise, good, and scientific, these illustrations were
unnecessary; this need hardly be mentioned; and the passages which to
some may prove objectionable were not intended for them, either with the
expectation of delighting them or with the purpose of shocking them.
These passages, they can easily avoid. This book, however, was written
that it might be read: not only read by the Solon, Socrates, Plato, or
Seneca of the laity or the profession, but even by the billy-goated
dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold,
scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink
at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is silly, but it
is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of boring and
driving a few solid facts into the otherwise undigesting and unthinking,
as well as primarily obdurate understanding of the untutored plebeian, I
ask the indulgence of the intelligent and broad-minded as well as the
easily inducted reader. Cleopatra was smuggled into Caesar's presence in
a roll of tapestry; the Greeks introduced their men into Troy by means
of a wooden horse; and the discoverer of the broad Pacific Ocean made
his escape from his importunate creditors disguised as a cask of
merchandise. So, when we wish to accomplish an object, we must adopt
appropriate means, even if they may apparently seem to have an entirely
diametrically opposite object. The Athenian, Themistocles, when wishing
to make the battle of Salamis decisive, was inspired with the idea of
sending word to the Persian monarch that the Greeks were trying to
escape, advising him to block the passage; this saved Greece.
There is a weird and ghostly but interesting tale connected with the
Moslem conquest of Spain, of how Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings,
when in trouble and worry, repaired to an old castle, in the secret
recesses of which was a magic table whereon would pass in grim
procession the different events of the future of Spain; as he gazed on
the enchanted table he there saw his own ruin and his country's and
nation's subjugation. Anatomy is generally called a dry study, but, like
the enchanted brazen table in the ancient Gothic castle, it tells a no
less weird or interesting tale of the past. Its revelations lighten up a
long vista, through the thousands of years through which the human
species has evolved from its earliest appearance on earth, gradually
working up through the different evolutionary processes to what is
to-day supposed to be the acme of perfection as seen in the
Indo-European and Semitic races of man. Anatomy points to the
rudiment--still lingering, now and then still appearing in some one man
and without a trace in the next--of that climbing muscle which shows man
in the past either nervously escaping up the trunk of a tree in his
flight from many of the carnivorous animals with whom he was
contemporary, or, as the shades of night were beginning to gather
around him, we again see him by the aid of these muscles leisurely
climbing up to some hospitable fork in the tree, where the robust habits
of the age allowed him to find a comfortable resting-place; protected
from the dew of the night by the overhanging branches and from the
prowling hyena by the height of the tree, he passed the night in
security. The now useless ear-muscles, as well as the equally useless
series of muscles about the nose, also tell us of a movable, flapping
ear capable of being turned in any direction to catch the sound of
approaching danger, as well as of a movable and dilated nostril that
scented danger from afar,--the olfactory sense at one time having a
different function and more essential to life than that of merely noting
the differential aroma emitted by segars or cups of Mocha or Java, and
the ear being then used for some more useful purpose than having its
tympanum tortured by Wagnerian discordant sounds. Our ancestors might
not have been a very handsome set, nor, judging from the Neanderthal
skull, could they have had a very winning physiognomy, but they were a
very hardy and self-reliant set of men. Nature--always careful that
nothing should interfere with the procreative functions--had provided
him with a sheath or prepuce, wherein he carried his procreative organ
safely out of harm's way, in wild steeple-chases through thorny briars
and bramble-brakes, or, when hardly pushed, and not able to climb
quickly a tree of his own choice, he was by circumstances forced up the
sides of some rough-barked or thorny tree. This leathery pouch also
protected him from the many leeches, small aquatic lizards, or other
animals that infested the marshes or rivers through which he had at
times to wade or swim; or served as a protection from the bites of ants
or other vermin when, tired, he rested on his haunches on some mossy
bank or sand-hill.
Man has now no use for any of these necessaries of a long-past age,--an
age so remote that the speculations of Ernest Renan regarding the
differences between the Semitic race of Shem and the idolatrous
descendants of Ham, away off in the far mountains and valleys of Asia
lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates, seem more as if
he were discussing an event of yesterday than something which is
considered contemporary with our earlier history,--and we find them
disappearing, disuse gradually producing an obliteration of this tissue
in some cases, and the modifying influence of evolution producing it in
others; the climbing muscle, probably the oldest remnant and legacy that
has descended from our long-haired and muscular ancestry, is the best
example of disappearance caused by disuse, while the effectual
disappearance of the prepuce in many cases shows that in that regard
there exists a marked difference in the evolutionary march among
different individuals.
There is a strange and unaccountable condition of things, however,
connected with the prepuce that does not exist with the other vestiges
of our arboreal or sylvan existence. Firstly, the other conditions have
nothing that interferes with their disappearance; whereas the prepuce,
by its mechanical construction and the expanding portions which it
incloses, tends at times rather to its exaggerated development than to
its disappearance. Again, whereas the other vestiges have no injury that
they inflict by their presence, or danger that they cause their
possessors to run, the prepuce is from time of birth a source of
annoyance, danger, suffering, and death. Then, again, the other
conditions are not more developed at birth; whereas the prepuce seems,
in our pre-natal life, to have an unusual and unseen-for-use existence,
being in bulk out of all proportion to the organ it is intended to
cover. Speculation as to its existence is as unprolific of results as
any we may indulge in regarding the nature, object, or uses of that
other evolutionary appendage, the appendix vermiformis, the recollection
of whose existence always adds an extra flavor to tomatoes, figs, or any
other small-seeded fruits.
We may well exclaim, as we behold this appendage to man,--now of no use
in health and of the most doubtful assistance to the very organ it was
intended to protect, when that organ, through its iniquitous tastes, has
got itself into trouble, and, Job-like, is lying repentant and sick in
its many wrappings of lint, with perhaps its companions in crime
imprisoned in a suspensory bandage,--what is this prepuce? Whence, why,
where, and whither? At times, Nature, as if impatient of the slow march
of gradual evolution, and exasperated at this persistent and useless as
well as dangerous relic of a far-distant prehistoric age, takes things
in her own hands and induces a sloughing to take place, which rids it of
its annoyance. In the far-off land of Ur, among the mountainous regions
of Kurdistan, something over six thousand years ago, the fathers of the
Hebrew race, inspired by a wisdom that could be nothing less than of
divine origin, forestalled the process of evolution by establishing the
rite of circumcision. Whether this has been beneficial or injurious to
the race will be, in a measure, the object of the discussion in this
book.
One object of this book is to furnish my professional brothers with some
embodied facts that they may use in convincing the laity in many cases
where they themselves are convinced that circumcision is absolutely
necessary; but, having nothing in their text-books to back up their
opinion with, their explanations are too apt to pass for their mere
unfounded personal view of the matter. If the patient, or the parents of
the patient, ask the physician for his authority, he is at a loss, as
there is nothing that deals with the subject in any extended manner; so
that this book has been written in as plain English as the
subject-matter could possibly allow, so that non-professionals could
easily read and understand it. I have often felt the need of such a
work; people can understand emergency or accident surgery, military
surgery, or reparative surgery, but such a thing as surgery to remedy a
seemingly medical disease, or what might be called the preventive
practice of surgery, is something they cannot understand. First, and not
the least, among the incentives to skepticism on this subject is the
unwelcome fact of a surgical operation, which, no matter how trivial it
may seem to the surgeon, is a matter of considerable magnitude to the
patient, his parents, or friends; there are risks, pain, worry,
annoyances, and expenses to be undergone,--considerations which, either
singly or unitedly, often lead one to reason against the operation, even
when otherwise convinced of its need or utility.
The hardest to convince are those, however, who insist on having a
four-and-a-half-foot-gauge fact driven through their two-foot-gated
understanding, without it ever occurring to them that the gate, and not
the fact, is the faulty article, Some of these gentry are very
unconvincible. They at times remind one of that description given by
Carlyle in regard to one of the Georges, who found himself, when Prince
of Wales, leading an army in Flanders, and actually engaged in a
battle. His Royal Highness was on foot, and was seen standing facing the
enemy, with outstretched legs, like a Colossus of Rhodes, impassive and
stolid,--the very impersonification of Dutch courage and aggressiveness.
There he stood, unconscious whether he was at the head of an army or
single attendant; he might be overridden and annihilated, overturned and
expunged, but there he would most assuredly stand and fall, if need be;
overwhelming squadrons, by their impetus and weight, might ride him down
and crush him; but one thing was most certain, this certain fact being
that he never could be made to retreat or advance, as no impression from
front or rear could convince him of the necessity of either.
Then, there is our statistical friend, who cannot discriminate between
the exception and the rule by any common-sense deductions. He must have
all the authentic, carefully-compiled statistics before he can allow
himself to form any opinion. As long as there is the smallest fraction
of a decimal unaccounted for in a mathematical way, this individual is
inconvincible. These men pride themselves upon being methodically exact;
they express their willingness to be convinced if you can present
acceptable proofs; but, trying to present simple rational proofs to
these individuals is considerably like presenting a meal of boiled pork
and cabbage to a confirmed and hypochondriacal dyspeptic,--it only
increases their mental dyspepsia.
Had Columbus waited to discover America, or had Galileo waited to
proclaim the motion of the earth, until authorized to a serious
consideration of the matter by properly-tabled statistics, they would
have waited a long, long time; and, it may be added, the inconveniences
that attend the proving of a negative will so interfere with the proper
arrangement of statistical matter which relates to the prepuce and
circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and
convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that
follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage
from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary
preputial extinction will take place,--probably contemporary with the
existence of Bulwer's "Coming Race,"--but not at a too remote period for
the proper and satisfactory tabulation of the statistics.
The ideas of the etiology and pathological processes through which we
journey,--from a condition of health and good feeling to one of disease,
miserable feeling, and death,--as described in, or rather as they
control the sentiment and policy of, this work, are such as have been
followed by Hutchinson, Fothergill, Beale, Black, Albutt, and
Richardson, so that if I have totally ignored the old conventional
systems, with their hide-bound classification of diseases to control the
etiology, I have not done so without some reliable authority. In
studying the etiology of diseases we have, as a rule, been content to
accept the disease when fully formed and properly labeled, being
apparently satisfied with beginning our investigation not at the initial
point of departure from health, but at some distant point from this, at
the point where this departure has elaborated itself, on favorable
ground, into a tangible general or local disease. As truthfully observed
by T. Clifford Albutt: "The philosophic inquirer is not satisfied to
know that a person is suffering, for example, from a cancer. He desires
to know why he is so suffering,--that is, what are the processes which
necessarily precede or follow it. He wishes to include this phenomena,
now isolated, in a series of which it must necessarily be but a member,
to trace the period of which it must be but a phase. He believes that
diseased processes have their evolution and the laws of it, as have
other natural processes, and he believes that these are fixed and
knowable." To do this, the physician must travel beyond the beaten path
of etiology as found in our text-books. He must follow Hutchinson in the
train of reasoning that elucidates the pre-cancerous stage of cancer, or
tread in the path followed by Sir Lionel Beale, in finding that the
cause of disease depends on a blood change and the developmental defect,
or the tendency or inherent weakness of the affected part or organ; to
fully appreciate the inherent etiological factors that reside in man,
and which constitute the tendency to disease or premature decay and
death, we must also be able to follow Canstatt, Day, Rostan, Charcot,
Rush, Cheyne, Humphry, or Reveille-Parise into the study of the
different conditions which, though normal, are nevertheless factors of a
slow or a long life. We must also be able to appreciate fully the value
of that interdependence of each part of our organism, which often, owing
to a want of equilibrium of strength and resistance in some part when
compared to the rest, causes the whole to give way, just as a flaw in a
levee will cause the whole of the solidly-constructed mass to give way,
or a demoralized regiment may entail the utter rout of an army. As
described by George Murray Humphry, in his instructive work on "Old
Age," at page 11:--
"The first requisite for longevity must clearly be an inherent or inborn
quality of endurance, of steady, persistent nutritive force, which
includes reparative force and resistance to disturbing agencies, and a
good proportion or balance between the several organs. Each organ must
be sound in itself, and its strength must have a due relation to the
strength of the other organs. If the heart and the digestive system be
disproportionately strong, they will overload and oppress the other
organs, one of which will soon give way; and, as the strength of the
human body, like that of a chain, is to be measured by its weaker link,
one disproportionately feeble organ endangers or destroys the whole. The
second requisite is freedom from exposure to the various casualties,
indiscretions, and other causes of disease to which illness and early
death are so much due."
In following out our study of diseases, we have been too closely
narrowed down by the old symptomatic story of disease; we have too much
treated surface symptoms, and neglected to study the man and his
surroundings as a whole; we have overlooked the fact that there exists a
geographical fatalism in a physical sense as well as the existence of
the influence of that climatic fatalism so well described by Alfred
Haviland, and the presence of a fatalism of individual constitution as
well, which is either inherited or acquired. The idea that Charcot
elaborates, that, as the year passes successively through the hot and
the cold, through the dry and the wet season, with advancing age the
human body undergoes like changes, and diseases assume certain
characteristics, are also points that are overlooked; and nowhere is
this latter view seen to be more neglected than in the relations the
prepuce bears to infancy, prime and old age, as will be more fully
explained in the chapters in this book which treat of cancer and
gangrene. Admitting that Haviland has exaggerated the influence of
climate as an etiological factor in its specific influence in producing
certain diseases; or that M. Taine claims more than he should for his
"Theorie des Milieux," or influence of surroundings; or that Hutchinson
has drawn the hereditary and pedigreeal fatherhood of disease too
finely; it must also be admitted that the solid, tangible truths upon
which these authors have founded their premises are plainly visible to
the most skeptical; the architectural details of the superstructure may
be defective, but the foundation is permanent.
From the above outline it will be easier for the reader to follow out
the reasons, or the whys or wherefores, of the views expressed on
medicine in the course of the book; and, although I do not wish to enter
the medical field like a Peter the Hermit on a new crusade, to lure
thousands into the hands of the circumcisers, nor, as a new Mohammed,
promise the eternal bliss and glory of the seventh heaven to all the
circumcised, I ask of my professional brothers a calm and unprejudiced
perusal of the tangible and authentic facts that I have honestly
gathered and conscientiously commented upon from my field of vision,
which will be plainly presented in the following pages. I simply have
given the facts and my impressions: the reader is at liberty to draw his
own conclusions.
If I have been too tedious in the multiplication of incidents in support
of certain views, I must remind the reader that the verdict goes to him
who has the preponderance of testimony, and that many a lawsuit is lost
from the neglect, on the part of the loser, to secure all the available
testimony. Having brought the subject of circumcision before the bar of
public opinion, as well as that of my professional brother, I would but
illy do justice to the subject at the bar, or to myself, not to properly
present the case; as it was remarked by Napoleon, "God is on the side of
the heaviest artillery," and he who loses a battle for want of guns
should not rail at Providence if, having them on hand, he has neglected
to bring them into action.
The reasons for the existence of the book will become self-evident as
the reader labors through the medical part of the work. Our text-books
are, as a class, even those on diseases of children as a specialty,
singularly and unpardonably silent and deficient on the subject of
either the prepuce and the diseases to which it leads, or circumcision;
and even our surgical works are not sufficiently explicit, as they deal
more with the developed disease and the operative measures for its
removal than on any preventive surgery or medicine. Our works on
medicine are equally silent, and, although from a perusal of the latter
part of the book the prepuce and circumcision will be seen to have
considerable bearing on the production and nature of phthisis, this
subject would, owing to our strabismic way of studying medicine, look
most singularly out of place in a work devoted to diseases of the lungs
or throat. Owing to this poverty of literature on the subject, and that
the library of the average practitioner could therefore not furnish all
the data relating to it that the profession have in their possession, a
book of this nature will furnish them the required material whereupon to
form the basis of an opinion on the subject.
To argue that the prepuce is not such a deadly appendage because so many
escape alive and well who are uncircumcised, would be as logical as to
assume that Lee's chief of artillery neglected to properly place his
guns on the heights back of Fredericksburg. He had asserted, the night
before the battle, that not a chicken could live on the intervening
plateau between the heights and the town. On the next day, when these
guns opened their fire, the Federals were unable to reach the heights,
while many men were for hours in the iron hail-sweeping discharges of
that artillery that mowed them down by whole ranks, and yet the majority
escaped alive. We take the middle ground, and, while admitting that many
escape alive with a prepuce, claim that more are crippled than are
visibly seen, as, like Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," the ways of the
prepuce are dark and mysterious as well as peculiar.
A discussion of the relative merits of religious creeds, when considered
in relation to health, has been, from the nature of the subject of the
book, unavoidable. Modern Christianity but very imperfectly explains why
this rite was either neglected or abolished. Frequent reference is made
to what Saint Paul said and did, but, as Saint Paul was not one of the
Disciples, it is inexplicable wherefrom he received his authority in
this matter, seeing that the Disciples themselves had no new views on
the subject. To the student who prefers to study his subject from all
its aspects, the question naturally arises, "Where, when, and why came
the authority that abolished this rite?" There is one probable
explanation, this being that Paul, who was the real promulgator of
Gentile Christianity, had to establish his creed among an uncircumcised
race; although, as we shall see, devotees have not scrupled to sacrifice
their virility in the hope of being more acceptable to God and to be
better able to observe His commandments, and others, in their blind
bigotry, have not objected to sitting naked on sand-hills, with a
six-inch iron ring passed through the prepuce, it is very evident that
the Apostle Paul's good sense showed him the uselessness of attempting
to found the new creed, and at the same time hold on to the truly
distinctive marking of Judaism among Gentiles, the Hebrew race being
those among whom he found the least converts, as even the Disciples and
Apostles in Palestine disagreed with him. In the words of Dr. I. M.
Wise, it was impossible for the Palestine Apostles, or their flock,
either to acknowledge Paul as one of their own set or submit to his
teaching; for they obeyed the Law and he abolished it; they were sent to
the house of Israel only, and Paul sought the Gentiles with the message
that the Covenant and the Law were at an end; they had one gospel story
and he another; they prophesied the speedy return of the Master and a
restoration of the throne of David in the kingdom of heaven, and he
prophesied the end of the world and the last day of judgment to be at
hand; they forbade their converts to eat of unclean food, and especially
of the sacrificial meats of the Pagans, and he made light of both, as
well as of the Sabbath and circumcision. In the attempted reconciliation
that subsequently took place in Jerusalem at the house of James, the
Jacob of Kaphersamia of the Talmud, Paul was charged by the synod of
Jewish Christians "with disregarding the Law, forsaking the teachings of
Moses, and attempting to abolish circumcision." He was bid to recant and
undergo humiliation with four other Nazarenes, that it might be known
that he walked orderly and observed the Law; Paul submitted to all that
was demanded.
This, in short, with the exception of the sayings of Paul on the
subject, which are all secondary considerations, is really all that
there is relating to the abolishment of circumcision by the Christians.
The real Disciples and Apostles believed in Jesus with as much fervor as
Paul, but it is singular that they who were with the Master should
always have insisted on the observance of the Law, while Paul as
energetically insisted on its abolishment.
From these premises, I have seen fit to inquire into the relative merits
of the three religions practiced by what we call the civilized nations,
as they affect man morally, physically, and mentally. I have given the
facts, my impressions, and reasons for being so impressed; from these,
the reader can easily see that religion has more to do with man's
temporal existence than is generally believed; its discussion is not,
therefore, out of place in this book.
Repetitions in the course of the work have been unavoidable. This is not
a novel nor a work of fiction, and wherever the want of repetition would
have been an injury, either to the proper representation of a fact or a
principle, the repetition has not been avoided. In describing the
operations, I had desired to avoid any too numerous descriptions, as
that is confusing, but have thought it best to give a number, as the
reader will thereby obtain the views of the different operators, the
mode of the operation often being an index to the view of the operator
in regard to the needs or utility of a prepuce. In the general plan of
the work, I have adopted the idea and the historical relation carried
out by Bergmann, of Strasburg, who included all the mutilations
practiced on the genitals while discussing the subject of circumcision,
they being, in the originality of performance, somewhat intimately
connected; this also tends to make the subject more interesting as a
contribution to the natural history of man,--something in which all
intelligent persons are more or less interested.
P. C. REMONDINO, M.D.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN CIRCUMCISION.
(From Chabas and Ebers' description of the bas-relief found in the
temple of Khons, near the great temple of Maut, at Karnac.)]
CHAPTER I.
ANTIQUITY OF CIRCUMCISION.
If the ceremonials of the Catholic Church or the High Church
Episcopalians carry us back into the depths of antiquity, or, as
remarked by Frothingham, that the ceremonies of St. Peter, at Rome,
carried him back to the mysteries of Eulesis, to the sacrificial rites
of ancient Phoenicia, to what misty antiquity does not the contemplation
of the rite of circumcision take us? The Alexandrian library, with its
vast collection of precious records, could probably have furnished us
some information as to its origin and antiquity; but Moslem fanaticism,
with its belief in the all-sufficiency and infallibility of the Koran,
was the destruction of that wonderful repository. We must now depend
wholly on the relation of the Old Testament or on what has since been
written by the Greek and Italian historians as to its origin and
practices. The Egyptian monuments and their hyeroglyphics give us no
information on the subject further back than the reign of Rameses II;
while the oft-quoted Herodotus wrote some fourteen centuries after the
Old Testament relation, and Strabo and Diodorus some nineteen centuries
after the same chronicler. We have, therefore, in their chronological
order, first, the relation of the Bible; then the Egyptian monuments and
their revelations; and, thirdly, the information gathered by Pythagoras,
Herodotus, and other philosophers and historians. To these three
sources we may add the misty mixture of tradition and mythological
events, whose beginnings as to period of time are indefinite. These are
the sources from which we are to determine the origin and antiquity as
well as the character of the rite.
Voltaire found in the subject of circumcision one that he could not
satisfactorily make enter into his peculiar system of general
philosophy. For some reason, he did not wish that the Israelites should
have the credit of its introduction; were he to have admitted that, he
would have had to explain away the divine origin of the rite,--something
that the Hebrew has tenaciously held for over thirty-seven centuries.
Voltaire thought it would simplify the subject by making it originate
with the Egyptians, from whom the Hebrews were to borrow it. To do this
he adopted the relation of Herodotus on the subject. His treatment of
the Jewish race, however, brought out a strong antagonism from those
people to his attacks, and in a volume entitled, "Letters of Certain
Jews to Monsieur Voltaire,"--being a series of criticisms on his
aspersions on the race and on the writings of the Old Testament (written
by a number of Portuguese, German, and Polish Jews then residing in
Holland[1]),--they proved conclusively that the Phoenicians had borrowed
the rite from the Israelites, as they (the Phoenicians) had practiced
the rite on the newborn, whereas, had they followed the Egyptian rite,
they would have only circumcised the child after its having passed its
thirteenth year,--these being the distinctive differences between the
Jewish and Egyptian rites.
Luckily, in the small temple of Khons, which formed an annex to the
greater temple of Maut, at Karnac, there was found a _bas-relief_,
partly perfect, which goes far toward giving light on the subject of
Egyptian circumcision. The upper part of the sculpture was so defaced
that the upper portions of four of the five figures were destroyed, but
the lower portions were so perfect in every detail as to furnish a full
history of the age of the candidates for the rite and the manner of its
performance. It is further interesting from the fact that it establishes
also the time during which the rite was so performed. M. Chabas and Dr.
Ebers argue, from the founder of the temple having been Rameses II, that
the sculpture refers to the circumcision of two of his children. The
knife appears to be a stone implement, and the operator kneels in front
of the child, who is standing, while a matron supports him in a kneeling
posture, and she holds his hands from behind him.[2] In this
_bas-relief_ we can see the great difference that existed between the
two forms of the operation, that of the Hebrews being performed, as a
rule, on the eighth day after birth, while in the _bas-relief_ they are
ten or twelve years old.
Although tradition and mythology veil past events in more or less
obscurity, they do, in regard to circumcision, furnish considerable
explanatory light on matters which would be otherwise hard to reconcile.
Circumcision has been performed by the Chippeways, on the Upper
Mississippi, and its modifications were performed among the Mexicans,
Central Americans, and some South American tribes of Indians, as well as
among many of the natives dwelling among the islands of the Pacific
Archipelago. There is a tradition, mentioned by Donnelly in connection
with the sunken continent of Atlantis, that Ouranos, one of the
Atlantean kings, ordered his whole army to be circumcised that they
might escape a fatal scourge then decimating the people to their
westward.[3] This tradition tells us that the hygienic benefits of
circumcision were recognized antediluvian facts, as it also points out
the way by which circumcision traveled westward across to the Western
World. As Donnelly has pointed out, many of the Americans possessed not
only traditions, habits, and customs that must have come from the Old
World, but the similarity of many words and their meaning that exists
between some of the American languages and those of the indigenous
inhabitants that have still their remains in spots on the southwestern
shores of Europe--the ancient Armorica whose colony in Wales still
retains its ancient words--leaves no room for doubt that at one time a
landed highway existed between the two worlds. The Mandans, on the Upper
Missouri, have many words of undoubted Armorican origin in their
vocabulary,[4] just as the Chiapenec, of Central America, contains its
principal words denotive of deity, family relations, and many conditions
of life that are identically the same as in the Hebrew,[5] the name of
father, son, daughter, God, king, and rich being essentially the same in
the two languages. It must have been more than a passing coincidence
that gives the Mandans some of their most expressive words from the
Welsh, or that gave to Central America many cities bearing analogous
names with the cities of Armenia.[6] Canadian names of localities, as
well as those of the Mississippi Valley, denote the French origin of
their pioneers, as well as the names of Upper California denote the
nationality and creed of its first settlers. So that there is nothing
strange in asserting that American civilization and many of the customs
as found in the fifteenth century by the early Spanish discoverers were
nothing more than the remains of ancient and modified Phoenician
civilization, among which figured circumcision.
Dr. A. B. Arnold, of Baltimore, argues that, with the present state of
our anthropological knowledge and the material that research has been
able to furnish, we need no longer be surprised to find customs, laws,
and morals, among nations living in regions of the world widely apart
from each other, which betray an identity of origin and development, and
that beliefs and institutions, whether wise or aberrant, grow up under
apparently dissimilar circumstances, circumcision forming no
exception.[7] Dr. Arnold leaves too much to chance. It is hardly likely
that the similarity that existed between the architecture of the
Phoenicians and the Central Americans, as evinced in their arches; in
the beginning of the century on the 26th of February; the advancement
and interest taken in astronomical science; the coexistence of pyramids
in Egypt and Central America; that five Armenian cities should have
their namesakes in Central America, should all be a matter of accident.
The historiographer of the Canary Islands, M. Benshalet, considers that
those islands once formed a part of the great continent to its west;
this has been verified by the discovery of many sculptured symbols,
similar in the Canaries and on the shores of Lake Superior, as well as
by the discovery of a mummy in the Canaries with sandals whose exact
counterparts were found in Central America.[8] A compound word used to
signify the Great Spirit being found identical in the Welsh and Mandan
languages, each requiring five distinct sounds to pronounce, words as
intricate as the passwords of secret societies, can hardly be said to be
the result of chance.[9] There must, at some remote period, have existed
some communication between the ancestors of these Missouri Mandans and
the shores of ancient Armorica; the ancestors of these Mandans may have
then been living farther to the east; they even may have then been a
tribe of since lost Atlantis; but the analogy, not only in regard to the
word just mentioned,--_Maho-peneta_, of the Welsh and Mandan,--but in
the similarity of the pronouns of both languages, and the existence of
the idea of the counterpart of the sacred white bull of the Egyptians
being found among the Dakotas, or Sioux, all point to the fact that
these people, in common with the rest of the Americans, originally came
from the East; from whence came their languages, manners, customs,
rites, and what civilization they possessed, among which circumcision
has, through the mist of centuries, held its own in some shape or other.
That some terrible catastrophe occurred to divide the hemispheres is
evident; the Western World remaining stationary in its civilization and
retaining the customs and rites of the times as evidence of their
origin. With this view of the case, the existence of circumcision as
found among the inhabitants of the West can easily be traced to its
origin among the hills of Chaldea. The ancient traditions and
mythological relations of the Egyptians in regard to the great nation to
the West are amply verified by the deep-sea soundings of the
"Challenger," the "Dolphin," and the "Gazelle," which plainly indicate
the presence of a submarine plateau that once formed the continent of
Atlantis, whose only visible evidence above the waves of the boisterous
Atlantic is the Azores and the remains of Phoenician civilization among
the Americans.
Professor Worman, of Brooklyn, scouts the idea that circumcision was
ever connected in any way or that it originated in any of the rites
connected with phallic worship.[10] Bergmann,[11] of Strasburg,
however, not only claims circumcision to be a direct result of phallic
worship, but looks upon the rite as something that has been reached by
what may be termed a gradual evolutionary process of manners, customs,
and society, from the time of what is termed the hero-warrior period of
traditional history, when war and the clashing of shields and sword or
spear were the main delights and occupations of man. It is strange to
note what difference must have existed between these hero-warriors in
regard to their ideas of manliness; some were brutal and fiendish,
whilst others were magnanimous. McPherson, the historiographer of early
Britain, cannot help but contrast the superior manliness of the heroes
of Ossian in his graphic description of the ancient Caledonians, when
compared to the brutality of Homer's Greek heroes. The traditions upon
which Bergmann undertakes to found the origin of the rite of
circumcision are all connected with the inhuman and brutish passions
that animated our barbarous ancestry. The first incident given is the
Egyptian traditional tragedy, which was, in all probability, the initial
point of that phallic worship which, with increasing debauchery,
assisted in the final demoralization of Rome and Greece, after its
introduction into those countries.