History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present

by P. C. Remondino

The ideas of the etiology and pathological processes through which we journey,—from a condition of health and good feeling to one of disease, miserable feeling, and death,—as described in, or rather as they control the sentiment and policy of, this work, are such as have been followed by Hutchinson, Fothergill, Beale, Black, Albutt, and Richardson, so that if I have totally ignored the old conventional systems, with their hide-bound classification of diseases to control the etiology, I have not done so without some reliable authority. In studying the etiology of diseases we have, as a rule, been content to accept the disease when fully formed and properly labeled, being apparently satisfied with beginning our investigation not at the initial point of departure from health, but at some distant point from this, at the point where this departure has elaborated itself, on favorable ground, into a tangible general or local disease. As truthfully observed by T. Clifford Albutt: “The philosophic inquirer is not satisfied to know that a person is suffering, for example, from a cancer. He desires to know why he is so suffering,—that is, what are the processes which necessarily precede or follow it. He wishes to include this phenomena, now isolated, in a series of which it must necessarily be but a member, to trace the period of which it must be but a phase. He believes that diseased processes have their evolution and the laws of it, as have other natural processes, and he believes that these are fixed and knowable.” To do this, the physician must travel beyond the beaten path of etiology as found in our text-books. He must follow Hutchinson in the train of reasoning that elucidates the pre-cancerous stage of cancer, or tread in the path followed by Sir Lionel Beale, in finding that the cause of disease depends on a blood change and the developmental defect, or the tendency or inherent weakness of the affected part or organ; to fully appreciate the inherent etiological factors that reside in man, and which constitute the tendency to disease or premature decay and death, we must also be able to follow Canstatt, Day, Rostan, Charcot, Rush, Cheyne, Humphry, or Reveille-Parise into the study of the different conditions which, though normal, are nevertheless factors of a slow or a long life. We must also be able to appreciate fully the value of that interdependence of each part of our organism, which often, owing to a want of equilibrium of strength and resistance in some part when compared to the rest, causes the whole to give way, just as a flaw in a levee will cause the whole of the solidly-constructed mass to give way, or a demoralized regiment may entail the utter rout of an army. As described by George Murray Humphry, in his instructive work on “Old Age,” at page 11:—

“The first requisite for longevity must clearly be an inherent or inborn quality of endurance, of steady, persistent nutritive force, which includes reparative force and resistance to disturbing agencies, and a good proportion or balance between the several organs. Each organ must be sound in itself, and its strength must have a due relation to the strength of the other organs. If the heart and the digestive system be disproportionately strong, they will overload and oppress the other organs, one of which will soon give way; and, as the strength of the human body, like that of a chain, is to be measured by its weaker link, one disproportionately feeble organ endangers or destroys the whole. The second requisite is freedom from exposure to the various casualties, indiscretions, and other causes of disease to which illness and early death are so much due.”

In following out our study of diseases, we have been too closely narrowed down by the old symptomatic story of disease; we have too much treated surface symptoms, and neglected to study the man and his surroundings as a whole; we have overlooked the fact that there exists a geographical fatalism in a physical sense as well as the existence of the influence of that climatic fatalism so well described by Alfred Haviland, and the presence of a fatalism of individual constitution as well, which is either inherited or acquired. The idea that Charcot elaborates, that, as the year passes successively through the hot and the cold, through the dry and the wet season, with advancing age the human body undergoes like changes, and diseases assume certain characteristics, are also points that are overlooked; and nowhere is this latter view seen to be more neglected than in the relations the prepuce bears to infancy, prime and old age, as will be more fully explained in the chapters in this book which treat of cancer and gangrene. Admitting that Haviland has exaggerated the influence of climate as an etiological factor in its specific influence in producing certain diseases; or that M. Taine claims more than he should for his “Thèorie des Milieux,” or influence of surroundings; or that Hutchinson has drawn the hereditary and pedigreeal fatherhood of disease too finely; it must also be admitted that the solid, tangible truths upon which these authors have founded their premises are plainly visible to the most skeptical; the architectural details of the superstructure may be defective, but the foundation is permanent.

From the above outline it will be easier for the reader to follow out the reasons, or the whys or wherefores, of the views expressed on medicine in the course of the book; and, although I do not wish to enter the medical field like a Peter the Hermit on a new crusade, to lure thousands into the hands of the circumcisers, nor, as a new Mohammed, promise the eternal bliss and glory of the seventh heaven to all the circumcised, I ask of my professional brothers a calm and unprejudiced perusal of the tangible and authentic facts that I have honestly gathered and conscientiously commented upon from my field of vision, which will be plainly presented in the following pages. I simply have given the facts and my impressions: the reader is at liberty to draw his own conclusions.

If I have been too tedious in the multiplication of incidents in support of certain views, I must remind the reader that the verdict goes to him who has the preponderance of testimony, and that many a lawsuit is lost from the neglect, on the part of the loser, to secure all the available testimony. Having brought the subject of circumcision before the bar of public opinion, as well as that of my professional brother, I would but illy do justice to the subject at the bar, or to myself, not to properly present the case; as it was remarked by Napoleon, “God is on the side of the heaviest artillery,” and he who loses a battle for want of guns should not rail at Providence if, having them on hand, he has neglected to bring them into action.

The reasons for the existence of the book will become self-evident as the reader labors through the medical part of the work. Our text-books are, as a class, even those on diseases of children as a specialty, singularly and unpardonably silent and deficient on the subject of either the prepuce and the diseases to which it leads, or circumcision; and even our surgical works are not sufficiently explicit, as they deal more with the developed disease and the operative measures for its removal than on any preventive surgery or medicine. Our works on medicine are equally silent, and, although from a perusal of the latter part of the book the prepuce and circumcision will be seen to have considerable bearing on the production and nature of phthisis, this subject would, owing to our strabismic way of studying medicine, look most singularly out of place in a work devoted to diseases of the lungs or throat. Owing to this poverty of literature on the subject, and that the library of the average practitioner could therefore not furnish all the data relating to it that the profession have in their possession, a book of this nature will furnish them the required material whereupon to form the basis of an opinion on the subject.

To argue that the prepuce is not such a deadly appendage because so many escape alive and well who are uncircumcised, would be as logical as to assume that Lee’s chief of artillery neglected to properly place his guns on the heights back of Fredericksburg. He had asserted, the night before the battle, that not a chicken could live on the intervening plateau between the heights and the town. On the next day, when these guns opened their fire, the Federals were unable to reach the heights, while many men were for hours in the iron hail-sweeping discharges of that artillery that mowed them down by whole ranks, and yet the majority escaped alive. We take the middle ground, and, while admitting that many escape alive with a prepuce, claim that more are crippled than are visibly seen, as, like Bret Harte’s “Heathen Chinee,” the ways of the prepuce are dark and mysterious as well as peculiar.

A discussion of the relative merits of religious creeds, when considered in relation to health, has been, from the nature of the subject of the book, unavoidable. Modern Christianity but very imperfectly explains why this rite was either neglected or abolished. Frequent reference is made to what Saint Paul said and did, but, as Saint Paul was not one of the Disciples, it is inexplicable wherefrom he received his authority in this matter, seeing that the Disciples themselves had no new views on the subject. To the student who prefers to study his subject from all its aspects, the question naturally arises, “Where, when, and why came the authority that abolished this rite?” There is one probable explanation, this being that Paul, who was the real promulgator of Gentile Christianity, had to establish his creed among an uncircumcised race; although, as we shall see, devotees have not scrupled to sacrifice their virility in the hope of being more acceptable to God and to be better able to observe His commandments, and others, in their blind bigotry, have not objected to sitting naked on sand-hills, with a six-inch iron ring passed through the prepuce, it is very evident that the Apostle Paul’s good sense showed him the uselessness of attempting to found the new creed, and at the same time hold on to the truly distinctive marking of Judaism among Gentiles, the Hebrew race being those among whom he found the least converts, as even the Disciples and Apostles in Palestine disagreed with him. In the words of Dr. I. M. Wise, it was impossible for the Palestine Apostles, or their flock, either to acknowledge Paul as one of their own set or submit to his teaching; for they obeyed the Law and he abolished it; they were sent to the house of Israel only, and Paul sought the Gentiles with the message that the Covenant and the Law were at an end; they had one gospel story and he another; they prophesied the speedy return of the Master and a restoration of the throne of David in the kingdom of heaven, and he prophesied the end of the world and the last day of judgment to be at hand; they forbade their converts to eat of unclean food, and especially of the sacrificial meats of the Pagans, and he made light of both, as well as of the Sabbath and circumcision. In the attempted reconciliation that subsequently took place in Jerusalem at the house of James, the Jacob of Kaphersamia of the Talmud, Paul was charged by the synod of Jewish Christians “with disregarding the Law, forsaking the teachings of Moses, and attempting to abolish circumcision.” He was bid to recant and undergo humiliation with four other Nazarenes, that it might be known that he walked orderly and observed the Law; Paul submitted to all that was demanded.

This, in short, with the exception of the sayings of Paul on the subject, which are all secondary considerations, is really all that there is relating to the abolishment of circumcision by the Christians. The real Disciples and Apostles believed in Jesus with as much fervor as Paul, but it is singular that they who were with the Master should always have insisted on the observance of the Law, while Paul as energetically insisted on its abolishment.

From these premises, I have seen fit to inquire into the relative merits of the three religions practiced by what we call the civilized nations, as they affect man morally, physically, and mentally. I have given the facts, my impressions, and reasons for being so impressed; from these, the reader can easily see that religion has more to do with man’s temporal existence than is generally believed; its discussion is not, therefore, out of place in this book.