Chapter 19

SOME REASONS FOR BEING CIRCUMCISED.

The surgical and medical history of circumcision is intimately connected with the remotest ages, this being, in fact, the earliest surgical procedure of which we have any record. From the same records we obtain hints as to two conditions for which circumcision probably was suggested, either as a preventive or as a remedy.

Jahn, in speaking of the people by whom the early Hebrews were surrounded, mentions their idolatrous practices, and that their peculiar forms of Pagan worship were accompanied by indulgence in fornication, lascivious songs, and unnatural lust. Others of their neighbors worshiped the "_hairy he-goat_," with which they also practiced all manner of abominations. Sodomy, or pederasty, seemed a sort of religious ceremony with some of these heathen nations; from a religion it necessarily became a social practice; this, in connection with the phallic practices and worship, necessitated frequent exposure of the male member. The evil results, to say nothing of the disgusting and demoralizing tendency of these practices of the Pagan, were evidently well known to the Jews. The contrast between the physique and health of the pastoral habits, out-of-door life and simple diet of the Jews, and the necessary opposite condition of health and physique due to luxury and to these practices among their neighbors, could not have escaped their attention. How much onanism had to do with the establishment of circumcision may well be conjectured. Again, the other hint is in reference to procreation, as some stress is laid to the connection between the conception of Sarah and the circumcision of Abraham. Here we have suggestions of a preventive to onanism, and a cure to male impotence when due to preputial interference.[79]

Strange as it may seem, these two important results, due to circumcision, seem to have been lost sight of for some thousands of years, as even the able works of the physicians of the latter part of the last century have nothing to say connecting onanism and circumcision. Neither the works of Tissot on male onanism nor the pioneer work of Bienville on nymphomania speak of the presence of the prepuce in the male, or of the nymphar or clitorian prepuce in the female, as being causative of, or their removal curative of, either masturbation, satyriasis, or nymphomania; moral, hygienic, and internal medication being by both these authors considered to be all that our science could offer or do to alleviate or cure this unfortunate class. It is only of late years that circumcision, in its true relations to onanism, has received full consideration. In regard to its being a cure of impotence, its recognition has been of longer duration.

It is related by Leonard, in his "Memoires,"--who, in his capacity of hair-dresser in ordinary to her Majesty, the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette, had ample opportunity for picking up all the domestic small talk of the royal family and their affairs,--that Louis XVI, in addition to all his troubles and the indignities which he suffered, besides finally being beheaded, was afflicted with a congenital phimosis which prevented the flow of semen from properly discharging itself. It appears that his Majesty was no little annoyed at not being able to procure an heir to his throne. His royal sister-in-law, the Countess d'Artois, had given birth to a prince, the Duke of Angouleme, who was the heir presumptive to the throne in case of the non-issue from Louis; another sister-in-law had been brought to bed with a royal princess, and here was the king himself without any prospective possibility of any heir. Like all kings, he was more or less unreasonable; so he blamed his first surgeon in ordinary for all these short-comings,--as if it were the duty of these court surgeons, among their many other tribulations, to furnish heirs to thrones. The surgeon finally informed his Majesty that if he wished to become a father it would be necessary for him to submit to the slight operation that was the subject of the church festival of the first day of January, namely, the Feast of the Circumcision. His most Christian Majesty entered a protest to this acknowledgment that there was anything in Judaism worth imitating. The surgeon insisted that the operation celebrated on the first of January would put him in a way to have the much-desired heir. The king finally waived all objections from any religious scruples, but could not be brought to look at the prospective operation with any sentiments of agreeable expectation.

The king finally became good-natured, and a touch of that plebeian jollity which at times made him quite agreeable spread over his features as he imagined the ludicrousness of the spectacle that would be presented by a king of France in the hands of these handlers of the scalpel, treating him like an African savage. He took some days to consider the matter. On the next day he informed M. Louis, his first surgeon in ordinary, that he had decided on submitting to the operation, and the day and hour were fixed. The royal circumcision, however, never took place, as it is most likely that in the privacy of his chamber his Majesty worked, like many a plebeian or man of low degree had done before him and has done since, to bring a refractory prepuce to terms. The king was somewhat of a mechanic, as his skill as a locksmith has passed into history; so that it is not unlikely that, with what little information he had on the subject, he managed to sufficiently dilate, by scarification and stretching, the preputial opening, as from the year 1778 the queen had three children.

Cases of attempted self-circumcision are not rarities, as people have some inexplicable idea that a self-inflicted cut is not as painful as one that is done by others. The writer well remembers being called to assist one of these domestic surgeons who had undertaken to circumcise himself with his wife's great scissors. The man had a very long but thin and narrow prepuce that had always been an annoyance to him. The writer had circumcised two of his children for the same malformation, and the father, seeing the benefit to these two, determined to share in the general benefit; but at the same time he arranged to do it all by himself, and give the family and the surgeon a sample of his courage and a simultaneous surprise party. Securing the scissors, he wended his way unperceived into the recesses of his wood-shed. The mental and physical anguish the poor man underwent, and what soliloquies he must have addressed to the rafters of the wood-shed while making up his mind and screwing up his physical courage for the last fell act with the scissors, can hardly be described, as, in all probability, they were of the most rambling and inconsistent order. At any rate, he must have reached a climax in time and grasped the fated prepuce with a revengeful glee, and, with all his powers concentrated in his good right hand, he must have closed the remorseless blades of the scissors on the unlucky prepuce. When the surgeon arrived at the scene of carnage, he was directed to the wood-shed, on the outskirts of which hovered the family, frantic with fear and apprehension; within, in the darkest corner, with wildly dilated eyes, and performing a fantastic _pas seul_, was a man with a huge pair of scissors dangling between his legs, warning all hands as they valued his life not to approach or lay a hand on him. He had shut the scissors down so that it clinched the thin prepuce, and there his courage and determination had forsaken him; he lost his presence of mind, and was not even able to take off the scissors; he had simply given one wild, blood-curdling yell--like the last winding notes from Roland's horn at Roncevalles--that had brought his family to the wood-shed-door, and they had then sent for a surgeon. New terrors here awaited the unlucky victim for self-circumcision. He dreaded lest the surgeon should accidentally have it enter his mind to finish the operation with the scissors, and in that case he would be helpless, as the surgeon would, undoubtedly, have a sure and tender hold of it. After executing a number of _pas à deux_ on the Magilton step, while the surgeon endeavored to reassure him and gain his confidence, promising to remove the scissors without inflicting any further harm, he was finally allowed to approach, and, while the patient assumed a Taglioni attitude on one foot, the other leg being extended at right angles with the body and his hands clawing the air, the scissors was removed. The patient, through the aid of lead lotions and a week's rest, made a good recovery with a whole prepuce, chagrined at his failure, but happy to have escaped immediate pain.[80]

There is not much doubt but that the operation could have been suggested by its, at times, spontaneous performance, a case of which, by Cullerier, and some other additional cases have been mentioned in a former chapter. Cases occur at times, also, wherein the person having a previously normal and uninterfering prepuce has, through either herpetic inflammations or through impure connection, spurious gonorrhoea, or the use of some venereal-disease preventing-wash after connection, produced some irritation resulting in the abnormal thickening of the inner fold, or an interstitial deposit at the junction of the skin and mucous membrane, with consequent constriction, this deposit finally forming a hard, inelastic ring, which prevented a free exposure of the glans and interfered in sexual connection. In such cases,--like in stricture of the meatus,--any mechanical interference short of cutting with a knife only aggravates the existing difficulty, and it is not uncommon to have such cases apply for assistance after they have in vain tried to dilate the constricting preputial orifice. In the early writings of the Greeks, it is mentioned that among the Egyptians circumcision exempted them from a certain form of disease that affected the penis. Philon mentions particularly the immunity that the operation conferred against a species of affection which Michel Levy asserts to have been a gangrenous disease. So that, outside of any religious significance, there is no doubt that, in individual cases, circumcision has more than once been suggested, although it cannot be said that such individual cases would ever, or could, lead to its becoming a national or racial, much less a sectarian, rite.