INFIBULATION, MUZZLING, AND OTHER CURIOUS PRACTICES.
It seems a matter of controversy as to whether the Mexicans did or did
not circumcise their children. That they had a blood-covenant is
admitted by the historians, as well as the fact that this blood was
taken from the prepuce; but that the prepuce was actually removed is
something that is not agreed upon by all authorities. Las Casas and
Mendieta state that it was practiced by the Aztecs and Totonacs, while
Brasseur de Bourbourg found traces of its practice among the Mijes. Las
Casas states that on the twenty-eighth or the twenty-ninth day the child
was presented to the temple, when the high-priest and his assistants
placed it upon a stone and cut off the prepuce, the excised part being
afterward burnt in the ashes. Girls of the same age were deflowered by
the finger of the high-priest, who ordered the operation to be repeated
at the sixth year; and once a year, at the fifth month, all the children
born during the year were scarified on the breast, stomach, or arms, to
denote their reception as servants of their god. Clavigero, on the other
hand, denies that circumcision was ever practiced. It was customary in
Mexico, according to most authorities, to take the children while
infants to the temple, where the priests made an incision in the ear of
the females, and an incision in the ear and prepuce of the males.[18]
Grotins and Arias Montan at one time advanced the idea that the western
coast of South America was peopled by some mutinous sailors from the
fleets of King Solomon, who, in their endeavor to go away far enough to
be out of reach, were driven by winds and chance to the Peruvian coast.
Others have imagined that some of the lost tribes of Israel found their
way eastward to America, by the way of China, to the Mexican coast. The
same ideal tradition has made the lost tribes the fathers of the
Iroquois Nation in the northeastern parts of the United States. An
author, who will be quoted in another part of this work, scouts the idea
that the rite, as performed in America, had any connection or common
origin with the rite performed in Asia and Africa; but, true to his
theory of the climatic causes of the origin of circumcision, he
maintains that it originated here as it did elsewhere, being a
performance born of climatic necessity. He is, however, dissatisfied
with Father Acosta for not being more explicit in relation to the _modus
operandi_ of the Mexican circumcision. The want of being explicit, and
its consequences in this particular regard, may be inferred from a
"Diatribe on Circumcision," by a Mr. Mallet, in an encyclopaedic
dictionary of the last century, in which Mr. Mallet informs his readers
that Mexicans were in the habit of _cutting off the ears and prepuces_
of the newly born. Herrera and Acosta agree with Clavigero in asserting
that the Mexicans simply _bled_ the prepuce. Pierre d'Angleria and other
contemporary writers are as emphatic in asserting that in the island of
Cosumel, in Yucatan, on the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico and on the
Florida coast, they have observed circumcision by the complete removal
of the prepuce with a stone knife. The Spanish monk, Gumilla, relates
that the Saliva Indians of the Orinoco circumcised their infants on the
eighth day. These Indians also included the females in the observance
of the rite. The same author tells us of the barbarous and bloody
performances, in relation to the rite, of the nations on the banks of
the Quilato and the Uru, as well as those dwelling along the streams
that empty into the Apure. The same is said of the Guamo and of the
Othomacos Indians; according to Gumilla, many of these Indians, in
addition to the rite of circumcision, inflicted a number of cuts on the
arms, legs, and over the body, to a degree that amounted to butchery,
the child being reserved for this inhuman treatment until the age of ten
or twelve years, that he might, by his greater powers of resistance and
of recuperation, stand some chance of escaping alive from the ordeal.
The friar mentions that in 1721 he found a child dying from this
treatment, the wounds having become gangrenous and the child dying of
pyaemia; prior to the operation the children were stupefied with some
narcotic drink, and were insensible during its performance.[19]
Besides circumcision, the Americans practiced several other operations
that bore an analogy to the operation of infibulation, a procedure
common to the Orient and to early Europe, and so ancient that, like
circumcision, its source is in the misty clouds of antiquity. It
consisted in introducing a large ring, either of gold, silver, or iron,
through an opening made into the prepuce, the free ends being then
welded together. Females were treated likewise, the ring including both
labia. In some countries an agglutination of the parts induced by some
irritant or a cutting instrument answered the purpose among females.
Dunglison mentions that the prepuce was first drawn over the glans, and
then that the ring transfixed the prepuce in that position; that the
ancients so muzzled the gladiators to prevent them from being enervated
by venereal indulgence. The ancient Germans lived a life of chastity
until their marriage, and to their observance of a chaste life can be
attributed the superior physical development of the race, as both males
and females were not only fully developed, but were not enervated by
either sexual excess or inclinations before having offspring, which were
necessarily robust and healthy. To obtain the same results in a nation
given to indolence and luxury, and lax in its morality, some physical
restraint was required, and we therefore find the practice of
infibulation coming from the warm countries to the East. The ancients
not only infibulated their gladiators to restrain them from venery, but
they also subjected their chanters and singers to the same ordeal, as it
was found to improve the voice; comedians and public dancers were also
restrained from ruining their talents by the means of infibulation. In
an old Amsterdam edition of Locke's "Essay on the Extent of the Human
Understanding," there is a quotation from the voyages of Baumgarten,
wherein he states having seen in Egypt a devout dervish seated in a
perfect state of nature among the sand-hillocks, who was regarded as a
most holy and chaste man for the reason that he did not associate with
his own kind, but only with the animals. As this was by no means an
uncommon case, it led the Greek monks, in Greece and Asia Minor, to
resort to every expedient to protect their chastity; in some of the
monasteries not only were the monks muzzled by the process of
infibulation, but they even had rules that excluded all females, either
human or animal, from within their convent,--a habit that still prevails
among many of the convents of the Orient to this day,--that on Mount
Athos especially, omitting the infibulation of the ancients.
Readers living in the climates of extreme ranges and of seasonal change
cannot understand the physical temptations that beset mortals in certain
climates, any more than they can imagine the faultless condition of the
climate itself. The subject of climatic influences will be more fully
discussed further on; but climate, as a factor of habits and usages in
one part of the world, that are incomprehensible to those living in
others, plays a part that is but little appreciated or understood;
whether it be the question of diet, dress, or custom, climate exerts its
influence in no uncertain manner. As Sulpicius Severus remarked to the
Greek monks, when they accused the Gaulish monks with voracity and
gluttony, "That which you of Greece consider as superfluous, the climate
of Gaul renders into a positive necessity." So of all physical needs and
passions,--they are subject to a similar law. Those who have read Canon
Kingsley's small work on the "Hermits of Asia, Africa, and Europe" will
appreciate the above remarks; and it may be incidentally mentioned that
his description of the climate that is common to the hilly country
bordering on the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea gives as vivid
and as graphic a description of the physical condition of the climate
and of its effects as can well be written. It occurs in the life of the
hermit Hilarion, and the description given relates to his last home in
the ruins of an old temple, situated on a cliff in the island of Cyprus,
where the air is so invigorating that "man needs there hardly to eat,
drink, or sleep, for the act of breathing will give life enough." The
work gives the best insight also into origin and causes that led to
monachism, as well as it tells the benefit that the condition conferred
on humanity, showing a phase in the march of civilization that is but
little understood.
But, to return to the subject of infibulation, which has, in a manner,
necessitated this digression from the main topic. Thwing[20] informs us
that in ancient Germany woman was considered the moral equal of man, and
that woman might traverse the vast stretches of country unprotected and
unharmed. Woman never held such a position in the Oriental countries;
neither has man, under the sub-tropics, a like self-command as shown by
those ancient Gauls. So that, with the advent of Christianity and the
moral revolution that followed, primitive methods, either inflicted on
others or self-inflicted, were adopted to insure a chaste life.
Infibulation was known, as already stated, for centuries, and in those
rude times it seemed as the most natural and effective mode of
accomplishing the object. It was not as barbarous an operation as
emasculation on the male, as it only temporarily interfered with his
functions.
In the Old World the practice is still performed in various manners. In
Ethiopia, when a female child is born the vulva is stitched together,
allowing only the necessary passage for the needs of nature. These parts
adhere together, and the father is then possessed of a virgin which he
can sell to the highest bidder, the union being severed with a sharp
knife just before marriage. In some parts of Africa and Asia, a ring, as
before stated, transfixed the labia, which, to be removed, required
either a file or a chisel; this is worn only by virgins. Married women
wear a sort of muzzle fastened around the body, locked by means of a key
or a padlock, the key being only in the possession of the husband. The
wealthy have their seraglios and eunuchs, that take the place of the
belt and lock. Another method is a mailed belt worn about the hips, made
of brass wire, with a secret combination of fastenings, known only to
the husband. In the museum in Naples are to be seen some of these
belts, studded with sharp-pointed pikes over the abdominal part of the
instrument, which was calculated to prevent even innocent familiarity,
such as nest-hiding, to say nothing of greater evils.
In the "Les Femmes, Les Eunuchs, et Les Guerrieres du Soudan," Col. Du
Bisson mentions a very peculiar custom invented by the careful jealousy
that is inseparable from harem life. He had noticed that many of the
harem inmates, contrary to the general Oriental custom, were allowed to
go about unattended by the usual guard of eunuchs, but that they walked
in a painful, hesitating, and impeded manner. This walk was not the
conventional, short, shuffling step that peculiarity of dress and
shoe-wear imposes on the Japanese beauty, nor the willowy, swaying gait
produced in the Chinese beauty by the lack of a sufficiency of foot;
neither could it be ascribed to the presence of the ancient jingling
chain of bells which induced the mincing steps of the virgins of
Judea,--an invention which confined the lower limbs within certain
limits by being worn just below the knees, and calculated to prevent the
rupture of the hymen by any undue length of step or violent exercise;
hence a tinkling noise and a mincing step always denoted a virgin. In Du
Bisson's cases, however, virgins were out of the question; they might be
the victims of enforced continence, but a Soudanese harem contains no
virgins. On inquiry he learned that the very peculiar and unmistakably
painful gait was due to the fact that each woman carried a bamboo stick,
about eight inches in length, three inches or more being inserted in the
vagina so as to effectually fill the opening, the balance projecting
beyond, between the thighs of the person; this bamboo stick, or guardian
of female virtue, was held in place by a strap with a shield that
covered the vulva, the whole apparatus being strapped about the hips and
waist, and the whole being held in an undisplaceable position by a
padlock. This was affixed to the woman whenever she was allowed outside
the harem grounds, being placed in position by the eunuch, who carried
the key at his girdle. In such a harness virtue can be considered
perfectly safe; even safe from any mental depredation or revolution, as,
with the plug causing such uncomfortable sensations, it is perfectly
safe to infer that the imagination could not be seduced by any Don
Juanic or other Byronic unvirtuous revelry. The physical ills that this
contrivance must cause are necessarily without number, as the instrument
is not as lightly constructed as our modern stem pessaries; but to the
Oriental who can replace a woman at any time and who prizes the
virginity, continence, and chastity of his slaves, even if enforced,
more than their health or their lives, these are matters of secondary
importance. In the Soudan there are no divorce courts, hence the
probable necessity of the apparatus, and, as the woman is not obliged to
wear it unless she chooses to go out unattended, it can hardly be
considered as a compulsory barbarity. In the United States such a
practice might do away with considerable divorce proceedings.
Celsus gives a detailed description of the manner of infibulating as
practiced among the Romans. According to this authority, it was employed
by them on the youth attending the public schools, as well as upon the
actors, dancers, and choristers, who were sold to the directors of the
plays and spectacles. In the cabinet of the Roman College there are to
be seen two small statues representing two infibulated musicians, which
are remarkable for the excessive size of the ring and the leanness of
the persons to which they are attached. The mode of applying this ring
did not differ much from the usual method of preparing the ear for
pendants.[21]
Among the Greek monks mentioned, the infibulation serves a manifold
purpose; it not only is a sure badge of chastity, but its weight and
size is very often increased so as to render it an instrument of
penitence, and considerable rivalry exists at times in this regard.
Virey notices that the Hindoo bonze, or fakir, at times submits to
infibulation at the same time that he takes his vows of eternal
chastity. This ring is at times enormous, being sometimes six inches in
diameter; so that it is a burden. These saints are held in great esteem
and veneration.
Nelaton, in the sixth volume of his "Surgery," mentions the case of a
man who presented himself at Dupuytren's clinic with a tumefied,
thickened, and somewhat dilapidated and ulcerated prepuce; this prepuce
had worn a couple of golden padlocks for five years, a woman having thus
infibulated his organ.
In an elaborate work on the subject of circumcision,[22] de Vanier du
Havre relates, on the authority of M. Martin Flaccourt, that with the
Madecasses the children are circumcised on the eighth day after birth;
and that in some portions of the country the mother swallows the removed
portion of the prepuce, while in others the father loads the prepuce in
some form of fire-arm, which is afterward fired in the air. In the
neighborhood of Djezan, in Arabia, as reported by M. Fulgence Fresnel in
the _Revue de Deux Mondes_ of 1838, courtship and matrimony are not so
great social events as they are with our society beaux. The occasion is
probably considered social enough by the rest of the invited guests, but
it can hardly be called an agreeable episode in the life of the groom.
Those whose bashfulness prevents them from contracting marriage in
civilized communities can have the consolation of knowing that in
far-off Arabia, among the fierce followers of the conquerors of Spain
and of the Eastern Empire, they have sympathizing fellow-sufferers whom
the conventionalities of the country deter from rushing into matrimony.
In this region, circumcision is performed on the adult at the time of
his candidacy for matrimonial bliss. A more inauspicious occasion could
not possibly have been chosen, unless as in another Mohammedan tribe,
who circumcise the bridegroom on the day after his marriage and sprinkle
the blood that falls from the cut onto the veil of the bride. The bride
is present, and the victim is handed over to what might be called the
executioner of the holy office, who proceeds to circumcise the victim in
what might be called its utmost degree of performance and barbarity.
This attention does not stop at the pendulous and loose prepuce. He
devotes himself to the skin of the whole organ; beginning at the prepuce
he gradually works backward, removing the whole skin of the penis--a
flaying alive, and nothing more. Should the victim betray any sign of
weakness, or allow as much as a sigh or groan to escape him, or even
allow the muscles of the face to betray the fact that he is not
immensely enjoying the occasion, the bride elect at once leaves him for
good, saying that she does not wish a woman for a husband. A large
proportion of the male population annually die from this operation. So
that the Arabs of the Djezin can be likened to those spiders who lose
their life while in the act of copulation,--the female making a dinner
from off the male,--only the spider is said to die a happy death, while
that of the Arab is one of misery.
Margrave and Martyr have recorded a very peculiar practice common among
some South American tribes: A kind of a tube is fastened onto the
prepuce by means of threads of the _tacoynhaa_, the latter being the
bark of a certain kind of a tree. Cabras brought one of the natives, so
muzzled, to Lisbon, on the return from his first voyage. Some tribes
were observed to wear an apparatus like the old-fashioned
candle-extinguisher, the virile member having been forced into this
receptacle, which was strapped about the loins.
The travelers Spix and Martius found the practice of circumcision of
both sexes in the region of the upper Amazon River and among the Tuncas.
Squires mentions a curious custom of the aborigines of Nicaragua. They
wound the penis of their little sons and let some of the blood flow on
an ear of corn, which is divided among the assembled guests and eaten by
them with great ceremony.
On the fifth day after birth it is the custom among the Omaha Indians of
North America to christen the infant, the child being stripped and
spotted with a red pigment; considerable ceremony accompanies the
act.[23]
Among the cannibals of Australia, Lumholtz[24] observed a practice that
seems to have no analogue in the wide world, either as an operation or
in regard to its purposes. About ninety-five per cent. of the children
are subjected to the ordeal. This is no less than the formation of an
artificial hypospadias; this abnormality is formed through the penis
into the urethra, near its junction with the scrotum; the wound is about
an inch in length and is made with a flint knife which serves for no
other purpose; the edges of the wound are burned with a hot stone, and
the wound is subsequently kept open by the introduction of a small piece
of wood, which, on healing, leaves a permanent opening. These cannibals
undoubtedly are inspired by some Malthusian spirit which impels them
thus to functionally eunuchize themselves in one sense, as during
copulation the seminal discharge flies out backward through this
opening, being thereby a most effectual check on further procreation. By
some, this practice has been attributed to the unreliability of the
seasons in regard to food-production; but Lumholtz observes that where
the practice is most in vogue--among the tribes to the west of the
Diamantina River and west and north of the Gulf of Carpentaria--the
food-supply is not deficient, the region being full of rats, fish, and
vegetables. All the tribes are not subject to the practice of the
operation at the same time of life; in some, the hypospadias is not
produced until in adult life and after the person has married and has
become the father of one or two children, when he must submit to the
requirements of the law; the operation seems to be invested with some
civil or religious significance, as a palisade or stockade of trees is
placed around the place where it is performed. A native, aged about
twenty years, informed Lumholtz that the operation was performed because
the blacks did not like to hear the children cry about the camp, and,
further, that they were not desirous of having many children; this
native had not yet become a father and had not yet been subjected to the
operation. The natives were observed to be fat and in good physical
condition.
There is something mysterious in this operation. It can easily be
conceived how circumcision might at times have been suggested by its
spontaneous and natural performance without any assistance from man.
Cullerier reports one case of partial circumcision through the means of
an accident happening to a painter. The man was at work on a ladder,
with a small bucket of paint hooked into one of the rounds above him;
through some means the bucket lost its hold and in falling struck the
penis on its dorsum with such force that the prepuce was cut through on
a parallel with the corona of the glans for fully two-thirds of its
circumference, the glans slipping through the opening and gathering in a
fleshy bunch underneath the frenum. This man carried this abnormality
for some years, when, desiring to marry and seeing that this appendage
would be as much of an impediment as one of the huge rings worn by the
Hindoo devotee, he applied to Cullevier for advice, who promptly removed
it with the knife.[25] The writer has seen three cases, during his
practice, of spontaneous circumcision, all resulting from phymosis as a
secondary affection to venereal disease. The first case occurred when he
first entered into practice; it was in a young, stout, and full-blooded
man with a violent gonorrhoea. There was much swelling and tumefaction
of the whole organ, which seemed to be very rebellious to all treatment.
At one of his morning visits he was horrified to observe a transverse,
livid mark at what seemed to be the middle of the organ; by noon this
had gained ground to the right and left and there was no mistaking that
it meant nothing less than mortification. Never having seen a case, the
natural uncomfortable conclusion was that, through some cause or other
or the natural result of excessive congestion, the man was about to lose
one-half of his organ; and Burnside at Fredericksburg was in no greater
state of suspense and uncertainty with the fate of the Army of the
Potomac on his hands than the writer must acknowledge he was with this
man and his organ apparently liquefying under his treatment. The
surprise can be better imagined than described when, on the following
morning, the glans made its appearance safe and sound out of its
imprisonment, and at right angles with the organ there hung the prepuce,
thick and as large and as long as the penis itself, inflammatory deposit
and infiltration having brought it to that shape and consistence; the
glans became completely uncovered; the parts gathered underneath, where,
in the course of some weeks, they had shrunk to the size of a walnut,
which was afterward removed by the knife. In this case, as in the other
two cases observed, the corona was very prominent and acted as an
internal tourniquet by its upward pressure, the line of demarkation
being on the dorsum in the three cases noted.
That such cases would suggest circumcision is not only probable but
possible, as it would point out the manner of performing the operation;
but, in the cases of the Australian savages, who performed an artificial
hypospadias on themselves for a specific purpose, requiring a knowledge
of the anatomical relation of the parts as well as of their
physiological functions, it is hard to speculate how the operation was
first suggested or how it came at first to be performed. As a Malthusian
agent it is certainly an operation of the highest merit, and it should
be introduced, by all means, in the United States, where the wealth and
luxury in which the people dwell is fast drifting them toward the same
whirlpool that engulfed Rome, which was preceded by a dislike to have
children. Whenever the writer sees the poor anaemic, broken-down victim
of many miscarriages, he cannot help but feel that, if the laws of the
Damiantina River savages were enforced on their husbands, it would be a
blessing to the poor women without materially injuring the husbands,
who, in case of need of a re-establishment of the functions of
procreation, might be fitted with a vulcanite plate for the
occasion,--something like our cleft-palate patients are supplied with a
plate that enables them to articulate.
It was the custom among the Hottentots, when first discovered or known
to the whites, to remove one of their testicles. This was supposed to
enable them to run more swiftly and to be lighter-footed in the race.
The real reason, afterward found, was a mixture of pure humanitarianism
and Malthusianism boiled down to Hottentot ethics. With them a monorchid
was not supposed to beget twins; when twins are born in the family, the
mother generally smothers the female, if one happens to be such; if not,
then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and
nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for
the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable
infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer
the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy,
generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary
civilized white man would not do, even if his legitimate wife and all
his outside concubines were to have twins or triplets every nine months;
so that, even as strange as it may appear, civilization must need go to
the wild Bushmen in search of that grand old Quixotic chivalry that was
in ancient times always ready to sacrifice itself for the welfare of
woman.
The old Greek and Roman statues, representing the gods and athletes of
ancient Greece and Rome, are a puzzle to many, owing to the diminutive
and phimosed virile organ that the artists have attached to them. Galen
represents that the disuse of the organ by the athletes was the cause
of its undeveloped form, and that as the organ of these did not figure
in the worship of Venus, or participate in the festivals of Bacchus, but
was used solely and simply for micturating purposes, impotence was often
the result, citing the case of a patient who came to consult him for an
obstinate priapism resulting from venereal excess, who met, in his
anteroom, an athlete who was being treated for the opposite condition,
due to the too rigid continence to which he had been for years
subjected. Acton does not believe that continued continence has that
effect, quoting Dr. Bergeret, who had long been physician to a number of
religious societies, as saying that he had never seen serious troubles
of the organs of generation in these communities, which denotes that if
they indulged in proper fasting and prayer they were in the same
condition of flaccid impotence as the athlete in Galen's anteroom. Louis
VII, of France, tried fasting and prayer in connection with rigid
continence, and, as a result, his wife, Queen Eleonore, was divorced
from him and married Henry II, of England, who had not been continent.
Hence, we see that the old sculptors, whether wishing to represent
Jupiter or Plato, AEsculapius or Mars, a strongly knit and muscular frame
was desired, an athlete, gladiator, or soldier being used as a model;
the small, puerile, funnel-prepuced organ belonged to all these muscular
or well-trained classes, was a natural appendage, as enforced continence
and the most absolute chastity was the rule, to enforce which they even
resorted to infibulation. This enforced continence often resulted in
impotence, even before the prime of life was passed, accompanied by an
inevitable atrophy of the male organ, with the resulting prepuce in the
shape in which it is found in a boy of from eight to twelve years,
precisely as they are found on the statues. How faithful the sculptors
and artists were to nature and life in their representations can well be
imagined by a critical examination of the Apollo Belvidere, where the
difference of the scrotal position that exists between the right and
left testicles is carried out to the minutest anatomical detail. In our
age it is hard to conceive why their most masculine men should be
deified, and all their gods represented as the most perfect of bodily
development, while at the same time the finest physical specimens of
manhood were doomed to a life of the most rigorous continence. It is
also astonishing that all this should be done not from any principle or
consideration of morality or virtue, but simply as a means subservient
in producing at its maximum the highest degree of physical development
and endurance.