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.