XVII. The advantage of circumcision in obviating future venereal contagion is restricted by its principal advocate to one form (albeit the most important) of such disease. Even in this limited field the facts adduced appear open to dispute, and greatly to need confirmation by independent observers.
XVIII. In the hands of careless or inexperienced operators the surgical operation of circumcision has been followed by the most disastrous permanent consequences.
XIX. In face of the facts here set forth, it is NOT advisable to apply the operation of circumcision, as a remedy for congenital phimosis, to Christian infants; much less to extend this, as a routine custom, to the whole male population.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] The word 'adhesion' in the previous pages is employed solely as a term of convenience, to denote this imperfect separation, and does not imply any analogy to inflammatory processes.
[28] The writer first drew attention to the advantages of this method of treatment in the British Medical Journal, Nov. 15, 1874. Having instituted a tolerably extensive search through the medical literature of the preceding three or four decades, he is unable to find any account of a case in which the procedure failed to effect a permanent cure, unless there had existed previous disease.
[29] A fatal case, after circumcision for gonorrhœal inflammation, in a youth of 17, is reported in the Lancet, Feb. 25, 1882. Death took place on the eighth day apparently from septicæmic pneumonia.