History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present

by P. C. Remondino

CHAPTER XVI.
The Prepuce, Syphilis, and Phthisis.

It is not alone the tight-constricted, glans-deforming, onanism-producing, cancer-generating prepuce that is the particular variety of prepuce that is at the bottom of the ills and ailments, local or constitutional, that may affect man through its presence. The loose, pendulous prepuce, or even the prepuce in the evolutionary stage of disappearance, that only loosely covers one-half of the glans, is as dangerous as his long and constricted counterpart. If we look over the world’s history, since in the latter years of the fifteenth century syphilis came down like a plague, walking with democratic tread through all walks and stations in life, laying out alike royalty or the vagrant, the curled-haired and slashed-doubleted knight, or the tonsured monk, we must conclude that syphilis has caused more families to become extinct than any ordinary plague, black death, or cholera epidemic. Without wishing to enter into a history of syphilis, it is not outside of the province of this book to allude to its frequency and spread.

Syphilis is not restricted to classes by any means; it is not those of the lower class alone who are its victims. Dr. Fr. J. Behrend, in his work, “Die Prostitution in Berlin,” observes that abolition of the brothels in that city in 1845, ’46, ’47 and ’48, trebled the number of cases of syphilis treated at the Der Charité; in the year 1848 the cases of syphilis treated at that hospital numbered over 1800. It was also remarked during this period of legally-enforced virtue, that, as inconsistently as it might appear, the disease invaded the best of families. From Dr. Neumann, in his brochure entitled “Die Berliner Syphilisfrage,” published in 1852, we learn that, in the Trades and Mechanics’ Benevolent Union of Berlin, in 1849, 13.51 per cent. of the sick were so from syphilis.

In the thirteenth volume of the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, we find, in a review of the control of prostitution, an estimate in regard to the syphilization of a nation. The estimates are made on the most conservative figures, as, in the desire of the reviewer not to overestimate, he starts by figuring out the actual number of prostitutes in England, Wales, and Scotland to be only 50,000, when they were estimated, by those who had carefully studied the subject, as being more than double that number; the conservative estimate is, however, suitable for our purpose; so that we cannot be accused of overestimating the results. The portion of the review to which we wish to call attention is as follows:—

“Though the result of the evidence contained in the first report of the commissioners on the constabulary force of England and Wales was that at that time about 2 per cent. of the prostitutes of London were suffering under some form of venereal disease, yet we will descend even lower, and presume that of one hundred healthy prostitutes, taken promiscuously from England and Scotland, if each submits to one indiscriminate sexual act in twenty-four hours, not more than one would become infected with syphilis, an estimate which is without doubt far too low; yet, if admitted to be correct, the necessary consequence will be, that of the fifty thousand prostitutes five hundred are diseased within the aforesaid twenty-four hours.

“If we next admit that a fifth of these five hundred diseased women are admitted to hospital on the day on which the disease appears, it follows that there are every day on the streets four hundred diseased women. Let it be supposed that the power of these four hundred to infect be limited to twelve days, and that of every six persons who, at the rate of one each night, have connection with these women, five become infected, it will follow that there will be four thousand men infected every night, and consequently one million four hundred and sixty thousand in the year. Further, as there are every night four hundred women diseased by these men, one hundred and eighty-two thousand five hundred public prostitutes will be syphilized during the year; hence, one million six hundred and fifty-two thousand five hundred cases of syphilis in both sexes occur every twelve months.

“If, then, the entire population had intercourse with prostitutes in an equal ratio, the gross population of Great Britain, of all ages and sexes, would, during eighteen years, have been affected with primary syphilis. Be it remembered, we do not assert that more than a million and a half of persons are attacked every year, but that that number of cases occurs annually in England, Wales, and Scotland, though the same individual may be attacked more than once. Although it is evident that all the estimates used for these calculations are (we know no other word that expresses it) ridiculously low, yet we find that more than a million and a half of cases of syphilis occur every year,—an amount which is probably not half the actual number. How enormous, then, must be the number of children born with secondary disease! How immense the mortality among them! How vast an amount of public and private money expended on the cure of this disease!”

The same reviewer (P. S. Holland), in another article on the “Control of Prostitution,” observes that among the British troops syphilis is one of the most frequent of diseases, about one hundred and eighty cases occurring annually among every one thousand soldiers.

The effect of syphilis in depopulating the islands of the Pacific has been pointed out in a former chapter; the nature and origin of the disease that takes them off is unmistakable. Scrofula and rapid phthisis are taking off the inhabitants at a rate that, in those islands most affected, the native population will soon become extinct. According to Lancereaux, in the Marquesas group the women do not live beyond the age of thirty to thirty-five years, three or four months being the duration of the disease. Ellis, in his “Polynesian Researches,” published in 1836, remarks that at that date the disease, as above described, had but recently appeared. In the nineteenth volume of the “Archives de Médecine Navale,” Rey mentions that at the Easter Island pulmonary phthisis is the dominant affection with the adults, and that scrofula is very prevalent with the children.[75]