Montaigne has left us a description of the performance of the rite, as witnessed by him in the city of Rome in the sixteenth century. He relates it as follows: “On the thirtieth of January was witnessed one of the most ancient ceremonies of religion practiced by mankind, this being the circumcision of the Jews. This is performed at the dwelling, the most commodious chamber being chosen for the occasion. At this particular time, by reason of the incommodity of the house, the rite was performed at the door of the domicile. The godfather sat himself on a table, with a pillow on his lap. The godmother then brought the child, after which she retired. The godfather then undressed the child’s lower part so as to expose his person, while the operator and his assistant began to chant hymns. This operation lasts at least a quarter of an hour. The operator may or may not be a rabbi, as it is considered a great blessing to perform this operation; so that it follows that many are found who are anxious to exercise their faculty in this regard, there being a tradition that those who have circumcised a certain number do not suffer putrefaction in their mouth, nor does their mouth become food for worms after death; so that it often happens that they make presents of value to the child for the privilege of operating upon it. On the same table on which the godfather is seated all the required instruments and apparatus are placed, while an assistant stands by with a flask of wine and a glass. A warming-pan full of coals is on the floor, at which the operator warms his hands. The child being now ready, with its head toward the godfather, the operator, seizing the member, draws the foreskin toward him with one hand, while with the fingers of the other he pushes back the glans; he then places a silver instrument, which fixes the skin, and which at the same time holds back the glans so that the knife may not cut it. The foreskin is then cut off and buried in the little basin of soil that forms one of the appurtenances to the operation. The operator then tears with his nails the skin which lies on the glans, which he turns back over the body of the member. This seems the hardest and most painful part of the operation, which, however, does not seem dangerous, as in four or five days the wound has healed. The crying of the child resembles that of an infant undergoing baptism. No sooner is the glans uncovered than the operator takes a mouthful of wine; he then places the glans in his mouth and sucks the blood out of it; this he repeats three times. This done, he applies a powder of dragons’ blood, with which he covers up all the wound, the parts being then done up in expressly-cut bandages. He is then given a glass of wine, over which he says some prayers; of this he takes a mouthful, and, after moistening his fingers in the same, he applies the wine three times to the child’s mouth. The wine is then sent to the mother and the women, who are in some other apartment, who all take a sip. An assistant then takes a silver instrument, pierced with little holes like a small strainer, which he first applies to the nose of the officiating minister, then to that of the child, and afterward to the nose of the godfather.”[58] The above description of the performance of the rite in the sixteenth century answers to the method of its performance as was witnessed some years ago in France.
In the “Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Cyclopædia” of Drs. McClintock and Strong the following description of the rite, as taking place in our modern synagogues, is given:—
“The ceremony of circumcision, as practiced by the Jews in our own times, is thus: If the eighth day happens to be on the Sabbath, the ceremony must be performed on that day, notwithstanding its sanctity. When a male child is born the godfather is chosen from amongst his relatives or near friends; and if the party is not in circumstances to bear the expenses, which are considerable (for after the ceremony is performed a breakfast is provided, even amongst the poor, in a luxurious manner), it is usual for the poor to get one amongst the richer, who accepts the office, and becomes a godfather. There are also societies formed amongst them for the purpose of defraying the expenses, and every Jew receives the benefit if his child is born in wedlock.
“The ceremony is performed in the following manner, in general: The circumciser being provided with a very sharp instrument called the circumcising-knife, plasters, cummin-seeds to dress the wound, proper bandages, etc., the child is brought to the door of the synagogue by the godmother, when the godfather receives it from her and carries it into the synagogue, where a large chair with two seats is placed; the one is for the godfather to sit upon, the other is called the seat of Elijah the Prophet, who is called the angel or messenger of the covenant. As soon as the godfather enters with the child, the congregation say, ‘Blessed is he that cometh to be circumcised, and enter into the covenant on the eighth day.’ The godfather being seated, and the child placed on a cushion in his lap, the circumciser performs the operation, and, holding the child in his arms, takes a glass of wine into his right hand, and says as follows: ‘Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine! Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God! who hath sanctified His beloved from the womb, and ordained an ordinance for His kindred, and sealed His descendants with the mark of His holy covenant; therefore, for the merits of this, O living God! our rock and inheritance, command the deliverance of the beloved of our kindred from the pit, for the sake of the covenant which He hath put in our flesh. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Maker of the Covenant! our God, and the God of our fathers! Preserve this child to his father and mother, and his name shall be called in Israel, A, the son of B. Let the father rejoice in those that go forth from his loins, and let his mother be glad in the fruit of her womb, as it is written: “Thy father and mother shall rejoice, and they that begat thee shall be glad.”’ The father of the child then says the following grace: ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe! who hath sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to enter into the covenant of our holy father, Abraham.’ The congregation answer: ‘As he hath entered into the law, the canopy, and the good and virtuous deeds.’”[59]
CHAPTER XIII.
Mezizah, the Fourth or Objectionable Act of Suction.
Biblical and rabbinical traditions throw no light on the origin of the details of the operation as now performed. That it was anciently performed with a knife of stone is certain; an event common in its general observance, and which seems to have pervaded all nations or races, howsoever remote or scattered, that it has induced Tylor[60] to ascribe the origin of the rite to the stone age. We are told that when Moses was returning to the land of Egypt he had neglected circumcising his son, and that because of that neglect he nearly lost his son’s life; his wife, Zipporah, the daughter of the Midian king and priest, Jethro, seeing the danger and knowing its cause, took her little son Gershom and circumcised him with a stone knife, and offered the foreskin to God as a peace-offering. Just where the wine was first used we are not told. Wine, however, was an emblem of thanksgiving, and, being one of the fruits of the earth, was considered an acceptable offering to God. It has since, in some form or other, either as wine or as the representative of either divine or human blood, been used in both the Catholic and Protestant Churches in their ceremonials or vicarious sacrifices, or imitations of old customs. Circumcision was by many connected with a blood sacrifice; it was so suggested by the words of Zipporah at the circumcision of Gershom: “And Zipporah, his Midianitish wife, took up a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet and said, ‘Surely a Khathan of blood art thou to me.’” Much speculation has followed the use of this word Khathan, which, in the ordinary Arabian, may mean either husband or son-in-law; it also means a newly-admitted member of a family; a similar word means “to provide a wedding feast,” and one other word from the same root and branch means “to give or receive a daughter in marriage.” In our own day, the mohel, or ministerial circumciser, makes it a practice to draw a little blood from the skin of such as are presented for the rite, but whom nature has not furnished with sufficient foreskin for the operation. The application, thrice repeated, of the blood and wine to the lips of the child, is probably used as a sign of the sealing of the compact. Wine is mentioned in connection with the High-Priest Melchisedeck as the wine of thanksgiving at his meeting with Abraham; wine was presented to Aaron by the angel, who, giving him a crystal glassful of good wine, said to him: “Aaron, drink of this wine which the Lord sends you as a pledge of good news.” Originally, circumcision must have consisted of the simple removal of the foreskin, and the elaboration of the ceremonial details must have been a subsequent occurrence; persons wounding their fingers will instinctively carry them to their mouth, and it may be that the suction practiced by the Hebrews had its origin in this natural hæmostatic suggestion. Wine as a hæmostatic and as an emblem of thanksgiving and an acceptable offering naturally came in as an accessory.
This practice—which, in the old, patriarchal days of the simple shepherds, when men only lived on the flesh of their own flocks, their diet, however, consisting mostly of cakes of flour, milk, honey, a few herbs, or the flesh of the goat or sheep—could not have been as objectionable as it is at the present day, with blood and secretions in a continued ferment through diet and habits. Man, living in the open air of Armenia, Palestine, or Arabia, sleeping in the open tents of our Biblical forefathers, living on the simple diet of a shepherd’s camp, with the abstemiousness that those climates naturally induce in man, could not help but be healthy. In those early days, when neither passion, anxiety, nor worry disturbed either digestion or sleep, man had no vitiated secretions, wine was then a rarity, and water was the drink. One of the early patriarchs on such diet would have furnished a dainty and savory dish to the most fastidious cannibal, who is now tormented by the komerborg kawan, this being a term used by the Australian cannibals to designate the peculiar nausea that is induced in them when they recklessly eat of white man,[61]—something which they do not experience from feasting on the savages who live on the simple diet of a pastoral tribe. This primitive gastronomic science in regard to cannibalism even reached such a pitch of refinement that, as has been previously mentioned, some tribes even resorted to emasculation to improve the flavor of the animal juices, which by this procedure became less acrid. The Arabian and Oriental traditions bring us down tales of how, on the same principles, human beings intended to grace the festive platter were fed exclusively on rice. The salivary and buccal secretions, under such a simple diet as that indulged in by our Biblical forefathers, become bland and harmless; not only harmless, but even antiseptic and positively beneficial, acting on the same principle as local applications of pepsin. So that the practice, at the time of the patriarchs and in their own family, of this part of the rite could not have offered the same objection that it does at the present day. The modern house-dweller, living on a mixed diet and in a climate that induces him to eat grossly, both as to quality and quantity, partaking more or less of vinous, spirituous, or fermented liquors, as well as indulging in tobacco, is quite another being from the Arabian or Armenian shepherd of former days. Business anxieties and worry also have a very pronounced effect; so that, with the change in the conditions of man and the inception and multiplication of diseased conditions, as well as the creation of constitutional and transmissible diseases, this practice of suction should have been stopped.
Intelligent rabbis, devoted to their religion, are necessarily prone to defend any of the details in its ceremonials that age and practice have sanctioned, and even some of the later writings of Israelism seem to make the mezizah, or suction, a necessary and ceremonial detail. In the “Guimara,” composed in the fifth century, Rabbi Rav Popè uses these words: “All operators who fail to use suction, and thereby cause the infant to run any risk, should be destituted of the right to perform the ceremony.” In the “Mishna” it says, “It is permitted on the Sabbath to do all that is necessary to perform circumcision, excision, denudation, and suction.” The “Mishna” was composed during the second century. The celebrated Maimonides lent it his sanction, as in his work on circumcision he advises suction, to avoid any subsequent danger. Our modern Israelites are supposed, as a rule, to have taken their authority, aside from previous usage and custom, from the “Beth Yosef,” which was written by Joseph Karo, and subsequently annotated by the Rabbi Israel Isserth. In all of these sanctions, however, there is no reason expressed why it should be performed.[62] Maimonides undoubtedly looked upon this act as having a decided tendency or action in depleting the immediate vessels in the vicinity of the cut surface, and that the consequent constriction in their calibre would prevent any future hæmorrhage. That this is the natural result of suction is a fact readily understood by any modern physician. The depletion of the vessel for some distance in its length, with the contraction in the coat that follows, is certainly a better preventive to consequent hæmorrhage than the simple application of any styptic preparation that can only be placed at the mouth of the vessel, but which leaves its calibre intact. Hot water, or an extreme degree of cold, will answer to produce this contraction and depletion, but there is here a local physical reaction that is more liable to occur than when the contraction has taken place naturally, as when induced by depletion, instead of by the stimulus of either heat or cold. So that if, in the light of modern civilization and changed conditions of mankind, and the existence of diseases which formerly did not exist, we are now convinced that suction is dangerous, we should not judge the ancients too hastily or rashly for having adopted the custom, as it is certainly not without some scientific merit; although, authorities are not wanting who hold that suction or depletion increases the danger of hæmorrhage.