§ 34.
It has been fully proved in the course of our previous investigations that Asia and Egypt must be regarded as the two focus-points of exaggerated sensual licence, the conditions of climate being most favourable in those regions for the generation of affections consequent upon sexual excesses. So it may be fairly concluded without further proof that in the same parts of the world attention was early devoted to the problem how to render such influences,—no mere passing ones, be it observed, but continuously operative,—as little harmful as possible. Now in what way could this end be more adequately attained than by cleanliness carried out to the highest possible degree? As a matter of history, the merest superficial acquaintance with the customs and usages of Antiquity clearly shows that equally in Asia and in Egypt concern for bodily cleanliness had occupied the particular attention of both political and sacerdotal Legislators from the most remote period. More than this, it had come to be looked upon by the people as so entirely necessary, as to be all but inextricably blended with their very life and being. Any idea of vexatious compulsion entirely disappeared, and the laws and ordinances directed to this object are in force to this day as fully as they were thousands of years ago.
Inhabitants of the temperate zone who visited these lands were bound to think,—unless they gave more careful consideration to the subject than most were likely to do,—such almost universal and such scrupulous care for cleanliness exaggerated; and so we find, e.g. the Greek writers, who cite many of the usages of this description, invariably referring to them merely as a sort of curiosity. In later times, e.g. in St. Athanasius,[208] they are even condemned as being prompted by the Devil, in order to diminish the amount of time to be devoted to pious exercises. It may well be that in course of time a too scrupulously precise dependence on ancestral custom had brought many of these usages into ridicule, especially when they were practised in countries where in some cases the reasons for their observance altogether cease to be operative. Yet anyone who considers with due care the conditions under which they were originally introduced, will find himself constrained to admit that the Lawgiver was only obeying a behest of necessity.
If the different customs and usages of the Ancients in connection with their careful attention to cleanliness are examined more minutely, they are found to be divisible into two classes, according as (1.) their object was to prevent uncleanliness, or (2.) to banish it, when once admitted. All measures connected with sanitary police supervision, the enforcement of which in modern civilized States leads to such endless difficulties, were almost entirely in the hands of the Priests, to whom the People were accustomed to accord an unquestioning obedience. It was an easy matter therefore to prevent any injurious contamination from extending over a wide area; it sufficed simply to declare unclean whatever might prove injurious to health to ensure its being avoided in practice,—and in the majority of instances with the most scrupulous care. This is a factor in the problem that appears never to have been properly appreciated by our Historical Pathologists; otherwise they must long ago have abandoned many prejudices regarding the knowledge possessed by the Ancients as to contagious matter. For how could practical observations be collected on infection and the liability to infection, when every possible chance of infection was carefully and generally avoided? Most of the Peoples of Antiquity considered contact with a dead body a pollution, more than this, they thought even the neighbourhood of a corpse to have the same effect. They hung up notices to warn the passers-by, and placed vessels of water (ἀδάνιον, ὄστρακον, γάστρα—water-stoup, earthen vessel, water-pot) before the house where a dead man lay, that those who came in and out might be able to purify themselves again on the spot[209]. Of course all did not go so far as the Persians, who declared every sick person unclean. Still it is a fact, and this most certainly not merely among the Jews, that all the various infectious skin-diseases that were massed together under the name of Leprosy[210], and also Gonorrhœa (Clap), made the sufferer, and also everything he touched, unclean, and caused them to be set apart where no one should come in contact with them; and this continued so long as the sickness lasted.
Now does it really need any further proof that these diseases developed a perfectly well-known form of contagious matter: or is an arbitrary and imaginary theory to be adopted by preference, to the effect that injunctions of the sort owed their existence merely to the caprice of the Legislator, and were not based on any actual experience of real detriment resulting from their neglect in favour of others? At any rate it is certain that, where these laws were in force and where each individual followed them out exactly, a disease that is communicable only by close contact could not possibly be disseminated over any wide area. This could not take place under such circumstances, even though it had been engendered in its original form and continued prevalent for a long period of time.
However it was not only the sick that were avoided, but all possible causes as well that might lead to the disease. It was not only the effort required and the pain, but most likely the possibility also of injury resulting, that made the weakly Asiatic forgo the Jus primae noctis (Right of the first night), and declare unclean the supposed[211] injurious effects of the vaginal blood that flowed on the rupture of the hymen, as well as the act of defloration itself. Pollution was guarded against in this case, as it was by the regulation banishing women during the time of menstruation from the neighbourhood of men, a regulation that had the binding force of law amongst almost all the Nations of Antiquity. The same held good for the time of purification of women who had been lying-in,[212] a condition which was supposed in some unexplained way to be able to exert a possibly injurious influence on the genital organs of the husband.
[Depilation.]
§ 35.
In spite of all this it might yet happen that contact with a sick person could not be avoided, and all possible causes of the diseases in question escaped. Attention therefore was naturally directed to the effort to make the admission of the contagion and of matters having deleterious effects as difficult as might be. There were two means for attaining this end held to be especially effective,—depilation and circumcision.
The hair as is well known is particularly apt to attract and retain all kinds of moisture; and it will of course do this in the case of the genital secretions, whether healthy or morbid, if they come in contact with it. These secretions will the more readily exert an injurious effect, as each hair is accompanied by at least two cutaneous glands, possessing an excretory duct or pore, and in those parts of the body where a thicker and stronger growth of hair is found, develop a considerably increased degree of activity,—an increased activity which they exhibit in any case in hot countries. “Hence too the Priests in Egypt shave the body carefully; for there is something collects under the hair, that must be removed,” Philo says in a passage cited above, and a fragment of Theopompus preserved by Athenaeus[213] also tells us, that this habit existed also among the Greeks, as well as among different peoples of Italy.
In later times however the habit gradually disappeared in these countries; and is only found again at the period of greatest luxury, when the Pathics endeavoured by the removal of hair from all parts of the body, except the head, to assimilate their outward appearance to the feminine type[214]. Especially were they bound to rid the posteriors[215] of hair, as one penetrating into the anus during unnatural connexion might easily cause small cuts at the orifice, and produce chafings of the penis. For the same reason paederasts, as indeed was the case with all amateurs of Love, invariably took care to remove all hair from the genitals[216], to avoid endangering the posterior and the private parts of their mistresses. Even more than men, did women seek to remove the hair from their private parts, as they do to this day in the East. This appears never to have been the case among the Jews; but in Asia and in Egypt the custom was observed by all classes of the people, and probably from those lands first spread into Greece and Italy. It seems to have been adopted very generally by Greek women;[217] but it was especially hetaerae and “filles de joie”[218] who practised local as well as general depilation. A similar state of things must have existed at Rome[219], where older women resorted to the removal of hair from the genitals as a means of concealing their age[220]. In any case whether in Greece or in Italy the purpose and special object of depilation seems to have been soon lost sight of, and the practice to have been still to some extent kept up merely as a matter of fashion. Nevertheless it is a fact that the habit has continued even down to modern times in these countries, and is actually followed there to some extent on the ground of cleanliness[221].
Depilation is completed by the polishing of the skin with pumice, etc., a treatment that made it very much less liable to take up dirt of all kinds. This and the anointing of the body, that commonly followed it, as it did the bath (see later), guarded against the introduction of foreign matter into the tissues to an important extent, yet without interfering with transpiration, which in southern countries takes place more by the cutaneous glands than by the sweat-pores. This fact goes some way to explain how it was that the contagious plagues of Antiquity, generally of a transient character, never properly speaking acquired any wide extension, unless they were carried along with the Genius epidemicus at the same time; and that even the latter, as is the case at the present day, could seldom master and reverse endemic predispositions. This last consideration merits the particular attention of the Historical Pathologist, as giving him a partial indication why Antiquity comes so far behind later times in regard to startling epidemics, at the same time teaching him to regard Asia as the home of Endemic, Europe of Epidemic Diseases. This ought to safeguard him against many over-hasty conclusions in his views of the progressive developement and evolution of disease in general. At the same time it will undoubtedly destroy not a few agreeable dreams, where he has allowed imagination to outrun reality.
Circumcision[222].
§ 36.
Herodotus himself represents circumcision as a very ancient usage even in his time, as to which it is a moot point whether the Egyptians or Ethiopians first practised it. From the Egyptians it would seem to have passed on to the Phoenicians and Syrians in Palestine, from the Colchians to the Syrians living on the banks of the river Thermodon and Parthenius and to the Macronians[223]. To the present day we find Circumcision practised, as all the world knows, among the Mohammedans, Persians and Jews, among the Kaffirs on the South-East Coast of Africa, the Abyssinian Christians[224], the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands[225], as well on the mainland of America,—and this not merely among the coast dwellers, but also in several inland districts of South America[226].
Without in this place going into the different reasons that have been alleged to account for the original introduction of Circumcision, especially among the Jews, we may yet say, looking back to our previous exposition in § 29., that we hold ourselves bound to see in Circumcision originally a religious-hygienic measure, intended to guard a part of the body already in the earliest times held in such high honour among the Egyptians, Indians etc. as was the penis, against any probable chance of defilement by uncleanliness (sebaceous smegma on the glans penis); for it was found that the uncurtailed prepuce made the maintenance of a clean glans penis much more difficult, favouring as it did the collection of the smegma resulting from the sebaceous secretions, and thus gave occasion for the formation of pustules and ulcers and the like inconveniences. These were referred not to the natural cause, but rather looked upon as a deserved punishment due to the anger of the offended deity to whom the penis was sacred, the deity being himself defiled and made unclean by the uncleanliness of the organ. To escape such anger men were ready enough to remove a part, the direct utility of which was as little obvious at the first glance as that of the hair that grew in its neighbourhood,—a proceeding they were the more willing to agree to, as the mischief the uncurtailed prepuce occasioned was often enough manifested.
At first only the Priests, who of course were at the same time the Physicians of primitive Peoples, were allowed to undertake the performance of this operation; subsequently it devolved upon the people generally as well, either by direct command or because they were now convinced of the utility of circumcision. This utility however must have grown less and less frequently visible in proportion as fewer uncircumcised individuals were left in evidence; and so in the same degree the hygienic motive fell more and more into the background. Thus only the religious was left, and this was now taken as the sole reason and sufficient explanation of the universal custom. Circumcision accordingly came to be a symbol signifying adoption among such as were initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, and similarly adoption among the initiated of the Lord, adoption into the peculiar People of God. It is in this fashion the various discordant views as to the origin of circumcision, all of which proceeded in the first instance from a more or less one-sided point of view, may most satisfactorily be brought into agreement. True the motive for the operation was supplied by a pathological factor, but one which owed its force to a religious idea, and thus at first the knife was regarded not so much from the physician’s point of view as from the religious side.
But again later, when religious ideas of the sort were more and more disappearing before a cool examination of actual nature, when the tale of diseases originating in the anger of a deity was growing every day fewer, belief became impossible in the religious meaning of circumcision, or indeed such belief was deliberately rejected, now that a clear and natural explanation of the rite was to be found. The religious motive in turn made way for the medical-hygienic, as in Philo in the passage quoted above, and even Our Lord seems to have held no other view of the rite, when he says[227]: “If a man received circumcision on the sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are ye wroth with me, because I made a man every whit whole on the sabbath?” De Wette in his Translation adds: “that is to say, not simply, as in circumcision, in one member, but in the whole body.” In fact the question is here of the healing of the man “which had been thirty and eight years in his infirmity” (Ch. V.), whom Christ had made whole at the Pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, for which reason the Jews wished to put him to death. The sick man was afflicted in his whole body, i. e. in every limb, for without help he could not leave his bed and go down into the Pool. Thus Christ we see contrasts the healing of all the members with circumcision, making it plain that in his view the latter makes whole merely a single member, the penis, or at least puts it in such a condition that it cannot become sick (ὑγιῆ ἐποίησα,—I made whole); accordingly the rite possessed for him only a purely medico-hygienic aim.
As to the introduction of Circumcision among the Jews, this may very likely, as we have already pointed, have taken place in the following mode: Evidently the Jews when in Egypt were not yet circumcised, as the speech of the lord Joshua clearly implies, “This day have I taken the reproach of Egypt from off you;” for in the eyes of the Egyptians the uncircumcised condition of the Jews was a reproach, just as in later times “Uncircumcised” was the strongest word of abuse with the Jews themselves.[228] Moses brought up by the Egyptian Priests, initiated into their secret wisdom, must necessarily have been circumcised, and so have known the hygienic as well as religious point of view. Convinced of its expediency, he determined to introduce it among the Jews, in order to make them by outward sign in some sort a holy and pure priestly Nation.[229] For this reason we find the command to circumcise on the eighth day after birth specified among the Laws of Purification,[230] yet without any further supplemental addition,—which would certainly not have been omitted, if it had at that time been regarded as a symbolic sign of covenant. Circumcision did not yet possess its purely symbolic meaning; and so it is not yet included among the laws given at Sinai, where the blood of the Burnt Offerings seals the covenant with God.
But subsequently when the Jews at Shittim gave themselves to the licentious worship of Baal Peor, not merely the expediency stood out in glaring conspicuousness, but the positive necessity of observing the laws of purity in general, including that of circumcision in particular. Thus the long conceived idea of Moses came to maturity, to enjoin upon the People the rite of circumcision as special symbol of unity with Jehovah; though he could not hope to bring about its universal adoption by adults, until these were on the point of actually setting foot on the Promised Land. This could only be after the death of Moses; consequently it was Joshua at Arolath who first circumcised all those who had been born in the Wilderness. Now all the sufferings of the march were forgotten, the land flowing with milk and honey, that was to content all their highest wishes, lay before their eyes, and so they were willing enough to consent to purchase its everlasting possession at the cost of what is certainly a painful, but at the same time on the whole only a trifling, operation. But then when every male was circumcised, there was no longer any evidence, as explained above, to convince people of the necessity of the observance, and thus for the future Circumcision appeared in the guise of a purely religious symbol, as the sacramental outward and visible sign of adoption into sonship with Jehovah,—a point of view subsequently consistently kept to throughout the Old Testament.
Finally with regard to the notion, expressed in many different forms, that Circumcision was originally introduced on behalf of increased fruitfulness on the part of the Sons of Abraham,[231]—an idea found as early as in the pages of Philo Judaeus, it would appear not to be so much the greater length of the foreskin that came into question, but rather the same general reasons that ensured a condition of cleanliness in the procreative organs; for the alleged interruption of the ejaculation of the semen owing to the excessive length of the foreskin can after all only occur, if the latter is at the same time unduly contracted at its orifice in such a way that during the act of coition it cannot be drawn back over the glans. Supposing, as we have seen to be the case, complaints affecting the glans penis when covered with the normal prepuce to be readily set up through climatic influences, the free use of the organ of procreation must of course in this way have been interfered with, or even in extreme cases, completely prevented. But inasmuch as the Jew, in this resembling most of the Nations of Antiquity, made a numerous posterity his highest glory,[232] and as this could only be obtained on the condition of a healthy procreative member, every endeavour must obviously have been made to remove anything likely to be prejudicial to the part so profoundly reverenced, anything capable of disturbing, or even altogether frustrating, the due performance of its functions.
But just as this removal of a part of the prepuce, and the consequent increased possibilities of cleanliness of the glans, more or less counteracted the injurious effects of Climate tending to set up diseases of the glans penis in general, it must have equally exercised as against possible affections of this part resulting from coition a certain prophylactic influence,—though undoubtedly this was not so great as it has been in some quarters represented to be, as we intend to explain more fully elsewhere. Hence to some extent, but only to a limited extent, can the practice of circumcision be regarded as a proof of the existence of Venereal disease in Antiquity; but at the same time to refer it to this as sole motive, as Stoll[233] does, is quite inadmissible.
What has here been said of the Circumcision of men, holds good also in the main of that of maids and women. This consists in the removal of the praeputium clitoridis; but neither the amputation of the Clitoris itself in so-called Tribads must be confounded with it, nor yet the operation on the exaggerated nymphae or inner labia, of women. The Arabs, among whom this practice,—female circumcision,—is especially rife at the present day as it was of old,[234] call the part that is subjected to circumcision
نوي (nava), the circumcision itself خفض (battar)
or خفض (chaphad), and what is cut away in circumcision
بظر (bätr). Usually the circumcision of maids
is first performed on the completion of the tenth year by women who make it their special business and who are known as مبظّرة (mobatterat). These women perambulate the streets and openly call out, “Any maids to circumcise?”[235] Besides the Arabs, Circumcision of maids is to be found among the Copts or modern Egyptians,[236] the Ethiopians,[237] in some districts of Persia,[238] among the Negroes in Bambuk[239] and the Panos in the province of Maynas in South America, the latter actually restricting the practice to the women.[240]
[Baths and Bathing.]
§ 37.
In spite of all precautions adopted it was impossible to keep away everything unclean from the body, while this latter by its own excrements was constantly making itself more or less unclean;[241] hence it was only natural that from the most primitive times men’s attention was directed towards means of removing the uncleanliness so contracted. But the defilement was never more than an external one; it concerned merely the skin and the orifices of the mucous membrane, while the matter requiring removal was of a sort soluble in water, and thus water was always the chief and foremost means employed to secure cleanliness. Doctrines of Cosmogony further confirmed the practice; these made water the origin of all things, a direct effluence of the deity and therefore itself divine,—a means not only of purification, but of sanctification as well.
Θάλασσα κλύζει πάντα τἀνθρώπων κακά,
(The sea washes away all evils of mankind) was the refrain, one that resounds to this day in our ears from the East; so that we cannot wonder that baths and bathing formed a capital factor both in the public and private life of the Ancients. Whatever view might be taken of sexual intercourse, all agreed in this, that a certain defilement was connected with it, which (as follows indeed from our exposition on earlier pages) might easily become injurious to the organs brought into activity, and could only be obviated by dint of baths and a system of bathing.[242]
Thus we read in Herodotus:[243] “But as often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down beside a lighted censer, and his wife does the same on the opposite side; then when morning has come, both bathe themselves, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed. The same practice is followed by the Arabians too.” Whether bathing after each act of coition was a national custom of the Egyptians, we have been unable to discover, but Clement of Alexandria[244] states that they were forbidden, as was almost everywhere the case in Antiquity, to enter the temple without having washed or bathed themselves after sexual intercourse; while the Priests were bound to bathe after every nocturnal pollution.[245] This was equally an ordinance of the Jews, who at the same time were rendered by such pollution unclean till the evening. The last named People were also obliged to wash after every act of coition; at any rate Josephus[246] and Philo[247] declare it to have been so, for in the Old Testament it is nowhere enjoined. As is generally known, this custom has been kept up in the East down to the present day, even among the Christian populations,—affording a concurrent testimony to the necessity for its observance in these countries.
Whether the Greeks deliberately and with intention made use of baths and bathing immediately after sexual intercourse, it is difficult to ascertain quite for certain; but it seems probable, as not only does Mythology more than once[248] make express mention of the bath after coition, but the phrase ὅσιος ἀπ’ εὐνᾶς ὤν (being holy, purified, after the couch) points to the same conclusion. Moreover there is a passage in Lucian,[249]—though it is quite true he often describes Roman customs,—that might be thought to prove the same.
Clearer indications are forthcoming in the case of the Romans, who not only must not undertake any sacred function or enter a Temple, if they had failed to bathe after carrying out coition,[250] but were also bound generally after every act of cohabitation to wash the parts brought into use. At any rate this holds good of the women, and so applies to the Roman matron (comp. the passage of Suetonius quoted in § 27) as to Atia, the mother of Augustus, as well as in an even greater degree to the amica (mistress) or courtesan. The regular name for this was aquam sumere (to take water).[251] Indeed there were actually special attendants aquarioli (water-boys),[252] whose business it was not merely to fetch water for this purpose, but also in particular to bathe and cleanse the “filles de joie” after sexual intercourse. For this reason Lampridius says of the Emperor Commodus (ch. 2), aquam gessit, ut lenonum ministeriis probrosis natum magis, quam in loco crederes, ad quem fortuna pervexit (he fetched water, so that you would more readily suppose him born to perform the shameful offices of pandars than in the station whereto fortune raised him). Such cleanliness was especially obligatory on those who had to do with the preparation of food and drink, such as bakers, cooks and butlers;[253] and if we do not find it directly enjoined among many ancient Peoples, the only reason of this is that they were already accustomed to wash and bathe every morning[254] immediately on leaving their bed.
In the same way as after natural coition the parts brought into use were bathed and washed, this was also done after unnatural, and so we read in the Collection of Priapeia (Carm. 40.):
Falce minax et parte tui maiore, Priape,
Ad fontem, quaeso, dic mihi qua sit iter?
Vade per has vites, quarum si carpseris uvas
Quas aliter sumas, hospes, habebis aquas—
(Standing in threatening attitude with my bristling pruning-knife and your better part, Priapus, I enquire: “Pri’thee tell me, which is my way to the fountain?” “Go through yonder vines, but if you dare to pluck the grapes, you will find, stranger, water you must take elsewhere”). Clearly this is to be taken as meaning paederastia or irrumation looked upon as punishments inflicted for the theft contemplated; and shows us at the same time it was not without a “double entendre” that Priapus was set up as a direction-post to fountains, a point that Lomeier[255] has already brought out with perfect correctness. Again the fellator after his work used to cleanse the mouth with water, as we learn from several passages in Martial; thus amongst other places we read in one, of Lesbia,[256]
Quod fellas et aquam potes, nil Lesbia peccas,
Qua tibi parte opus est, Lesbia, sumis aquam.
(You fellate and then drink water; you do no wrong in this, Lesbia; where lies your work, there Lesbia you take water).
If we further add to this scrupulous cleanliness the quiet life led by the women of Antiquity, who spent most of their time, as women still do in the East, reclining, it is evident that in spite of the predisposing influence of Climate, injurious secretions from the vagina and uterus, or indeed ulcerations of these parts, must—speaking generally, and in proportion—have occurred but rarely. Moreover such maladies of the sort as were contracted were quickly got rid of again spontaneously, for very often even at the present day rest and cleanliness suffice by themselves for the removal of primary affections of the genitals. On the other hand it cannot be denied that a careless non-observance of these primeval laws of cleanliness must have then avenged itself all the more severely on the offending individual, and given occasion for the setting up of incurable diseases.
But great as the counteracting effect of the frequent use of baths in Antiquity was on the rise of diseases in general, and of those resulting from sexual excesses in particular, none the less in other ways did these same baths, directly or indirectly, give occasion for their rise and spread. As to their direct effect in this direction,—we certainly find but scanty evidence of any in the authorities, and even such as are forthcoming may very possibly be referred to the head of general want of cleanliness[257]. Still in view of the fact that at the present day the cellar baths of the Jews contribute to some degree to the spread of disease, and especially of skin-disease of different types, as did baths generally in the Middle Ages, the conjecture is surely justified that similar results followed in Antiquity, especially at Rome under the Emperors.
Indirectly maladies consequent upon sexual excesses were helped on by the mere fact that the ancient Baths afforded manifold opportunities for such excesses. The bath-attendants, or aquarioli (water-boys), who fetched the water for bathing, not only carried on vicious practices with the women frequenting the place themselves, but also made a business of procuration, as already pointed out just above, p. 214. The lascivious Roman Ladies took their own slaves with them to the Baths, that they might attend upon their mistresses.[258] At first the same bathing Establishments were used equally by both sexes, but not at the same time; and according to Dio Cassius,[259] Agrippa would appear to have first, 721 A. U. C., established the public Baths at Rome for men and women, from which place later on Baths open to both sexes were introduced into Greece, as Plutarch[260] states. The Greeks called these Establishments ἀνδρόγυνα λούτρα (men-women, male-female, baths), and used to set up an image of Hermaphroditus in front of them.[261] In the Imperial period, when all shame was laid aside and Heliogabalus himself in balneis semper cum mulieribus fuit (always visited the Baths in company of the women) (Lampridius ch. 2), the use of the Baths both by men and women, and this at the same time, had become an established custom, as may be seen from several passages of Martial;[262] and it was in vain the Emperors Hadrian,[263] Marcus Antoninus[264] and Alexander Severus[265] endeavoured to restrain the abuse by enactments. These were just as unavailing as were the invectives of the Fathers of the Church.[266]
The Bathing Apartments, from which antique Roman modesty had excluded almost every glimmer of external light, were now patent to the eyes of the passer-by. Fitted up with every device of the most refined luxury,[267] they were transformed into regular brothels;[268] and accordingly were not allowed to open their doors earlier than one hour before the ordinary establishments of this nature.
The same opportunities which the Baths gave for vice with women, they afforded no less for vice between men,—for paederastia. There it was that amateurs looked about for bene vasatos and καλλιπύγους, (men with fine instruments, men with handsome buttocks), and this among the Greeks as well as among the Romans,[269] though the latter in this as in other things beat the record of all other nations.
