It is surely not needful to seek any recondite motive for the origin of the practice of circumcision. No one who has seen the superior cleanliness of a Hebrew penis can have avoided a very strong impression in favour of the removal of the foreskin. It constitutes a harbour for filth, and is a constant source of irritation. It conduces to masturbation, and adds to the difficulties of sexual continence. It increases the risk of syphilis in early life, and of cancer in the aged. I have never seen cancer of the penis in a Jew, and chancres are rare.—Archives of Surgery.
Arguments by this distinguished surgeon, in favour of extension of the custom as a matter of ordinary routine to every male Gentile, are to be found in the Medical Times and Gazette, December 1, 1855; together with a reference to previous utterances in an identical sense.
Erichsen (Surgery, Ninth Edition, 1888, vol. ii. p. 1188) says:
Every child who has a congenital phimosis ought to be circumcised; and even those who, without having phimosis, have an abnormally long and lax prepuce, would be improved greatly in cleanliness, health, and morals by being subjected to the same operation. It would be well if the custom of Eastern nations, whether it be regarded as a religious rite or only as a time-honoured observance, were introduced amongst us.
In Holmes's System of Surgery, 1883, we read:
Circumcision is the operation required in children; and it is best adapted for adults also when the skin is redundant, and the margins of the preputial opening are thickened.
Mr. W. H. Jacobson (Operations of Surgery, 1889) says:
This operation is still not practised often enough, especially among poorer patients; amongst whom many practitioners still treat phimosis as a matter of but little importance.
Some of the pretensions set forth above on behalf of circumcision will be subsequently referred to; but on the plea for a general extension of the rite to nations not impelled thereto by special Divine command, it may be remarked that several Jewish surgeons who have written upon the topic by no means regard this with an eye of favour; and have, in fact, gone even so far as to denounce in the strongest terms its compulsory performance among their co-religionists.[12]