History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present

by P. C. Remondino

The effect of syphilization in inducing a scrofulous taint and the appearance of a rapidly-marching consumption among savage races has been well observed among the Indians in the southwestern parts of the United States, where the appearance of these fatal diseases can easily be traced to that as a cause. There is something peculiar about the Anglo-Saxon race that is fatal to the Indian; wherever they come in contact, the savage race begins physically and morally to crumble; the habits of the Anglo-Saxon in the matter of intemperance and his lust soon end the poor Indian; while, on the other hand, the Latin races mix with them without any physical detriment to the Indian. In what was formerly the Northwest Territory the French and Indian intermarried, and syphilis did not begin to tell on the Indian until the Americans settled the country. From these observations it is very evident that in the Polynesian Archipelago syphilis must have been the precursor of the phthisis and scrofula, as we know it to have been that which induced those diseases among the Indians of the Mississippi or Missouri Valleys, or of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts, or in the mountains and valleys of Arizona.

On the other hand, circumcised races, whose women have not carried a syphilitic taint into the race, are as a class free from any syphilitic taint. Neither their teeth, physiognomy, skin, nor general condition denote any syphilitic inheritance. This is true of the Jewish descendants of Abraham, who have more strictly adhered to the non-intercourse or marriage with other races, and whose women have abstained from vice; the Arabian descendants of Ishmael have, in a great measure, also retained their marked family individuality, except it be a few tribes, who, by contact with the soldiery of European nations, have had their women corrupted and syphilis introduced into the tribe through this channel.

Richardson, in his “Preventive Medicine,” observing on the effects of syphilis in inducing deterioration of the organs of circulation and their degenerative changes, says that, in his opinion, syphilis is the progenitor of various diseases, and that those who give this opinion the greatest range are, unfortunately, nearest the truth. The breathing organs, he remarks, are distinctly susceptible to injury from this hereditary cause.

In 1854, at the Metropolitan Free Hospital, situated in the Jews’ quarter in London, Hutchinson observed that the proportion of Jews to Christians among the out-patients was as one to three; at the same time the proportion of cases of syphilis in the former to the latter was one to fifteen. Now, this result was not due to any extra morality on the part of the Jews, as fully one-half of the gonorrhœa cases occurred among those of that faith. J. Royes Bell also observes the less syphilization among circumcised races.[76]

The absence of the prepuce and the non-absorbing character of the skin of the glans penis, made so by constant exposure, with the necessary and unavoidably less tendency that these conditions give to favor syphilitic inoculation, are not evidently without their resulting good effects. Now and then syphilitic primary sores are found on the glans, or even in the urethra or on the outside skin of the penis, or outer parts of the prepuce; but the majority are, as a rule, situated either back of the corona or on the reflected inner fold of the prepuce immediately adjoining the corona, or they may be in the loose folds in the neighborhood of the frenum, the retention of the virus seemingly being assisted by the topographical condition and relation of the parts, and its absorption facilitated by the thinness of the mucous membrane, as well as by the active circulation and moisture and heat of the parts. It must be evident that but for these favoring conditions the inoculation or infection would and could not be either as sure or as frequent. Any protecting mechanical aid that interferes with these favoring conditions grants an immunity to the individual, even when he is freely exposed; this protection has often been obtained by applying to the glans and penis a substantial coat of some tenacious oil like castor-oil, which was afterward gently washed off, first in a shower of tepid water and afterward in a tepid bath of warm water and borax.

Horner, formerly of the navy, in his interesting little work on “Naval Practice,”[77] relates that it was customary, in the older navy of the United States, to allow public women to come on board at some of the ports and to go down to the men between decks, the Department of the Navy being probably actuated by the same humane principle that used to induce some of the West Indian cannibals to lend their wives to their prisoners of war who were intended, in the shape of roast or fricandeau, to grace the festive board, as it was deemed inhuman by these philanthropists to deprive a man of his necessary sexual intercourse, even if they were soon to roast him and pick his bones. They may, however, have been selfish in the matter, as by some authorities it is represented that this was done to improve the flavor of the prisoner, who was said to offer a more savory dish through this considerate treatment, the strong flavor that the semen gives to flesh being well eradicated by free fornication. Whether it was through these motives of humanitarianism, or the feeling that an American tar was the equal of the British tar, whose praises and equality Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., writes a song about in “Pinafore,” who had as much right to contract a left-handed marriage as any Prince of Wales or any other prince or crowned head of Europe, the women were, nevertheless, allowed to go down between decks in preference to giving the men indiscriminate liberty on shore, the government further providing for their welfare by causing the assistant surgeon to examine the women at the gangway or hatchway, to see that they were not diseased. Horner relates the ludicrous appearance presented by a near-sighted assistant at one of the hatchways while making this professional examination, surrounded by the sailors and marines, who were greatly-interested spectators. Had the government provided a pot of castor-oil wherein the tar could dip his penile organ, as bridge piles are dipped into a creasoting mixture, these humiliations to our professional brother could have been avoided.

In the conclusion to be reached, circumcision is not put forward as the only exempting element or preventive measure that deserves all the credit for the immunity that the Jews enjoy from syphilis, or to the absence of hereditary diseases that are secondary or due to the presence of that disease in the parents, as considerable credit is to be given to the well-known chastity of their females. This chastity is, in a great measure, due to the inseparable conditions of their religion,—moral and social fabrics which are welded into one. Their charity assumes the most practical form, so that it is not possible for one of their females to have to resort to a life of prostitution to save herself or her children from starvation, as, unfortunately, is too often the case in Christian communities, where religion is put on and off with Sunday clothes. The temperance and sobriety, as well as the economy and industry of the father, are not without a good moral as well as a hereditary effect on the daughters, who are neither rendered brutal nor demoralized through the example and instigation of drunken fathers. They have, therefore, a better average homelife, to which they cling and which protects them. The aid and benevolent associations of the Jews are among the most efficacious of charitable institutions, and no class gives more freely or generously for this purpose. The Home for Aged Hebrews in New York is an example of the character with which they dispense charity. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find, in statistics of illegitimacy by religious denominations taken in Prussia, that the Jewish women are three times as chaste as the Catholics and more than four times as chaste as the Evangelists.[78] The Jew has, therefore, two avenues of infection from syphilis cut off,—the lesser liability due to his circumcision and the chastity of the women.

Richardson mentions the immunity of the Jewish race from tubercular disease, and notices the well-known relation existing between a syphilitic taint and a phthisical tendency. The comparative statistics offered by the Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians in regard to deaths from consumption have already been mentioned in a former chapter, they being as four Christians to one Jew, while the Mohammedan, from his greater abstemiousness and temperance to assist him, shows a still lower percentage than the Jew. There can be but little doubt that to this particular and well-marked less syphilization the Hebrew race owes much of its exemption from many other diseases and its greater resistance to ordinary ailments and epidemic diseases.

The relative less frequency of syphilis among all circumcised people is noticed by Dr. Bernheim, in his brochure “De la Circoncision,” he being the surgeon of the Israelitish Consistory of Paris. His utterances on this subject are worthy of attention, he having not only paid particular attention to this, but having had unusual opportunities for the basis of his opinions. Dr. Bernheim looks upon coition as a frequent source of tubercular infection, and the sensitive and absorbing covering of the uncircumcised glans as a ready medium of transmission of the virus from one system to the other. He calls attention to the frequent granular condition of the uterine os, in confirmed cases of tuberculosis, as something that is too much overlooked. This view of the case, from Dr. Bernheim’s stand-point, is worthy of greater consideration than it has generally received at the hands of the profession.

The great number of examples that have recently come to light in connection with the direct inoculability of tubercular consumption, both in the later works on phthisis and in the medical press, are not without interest or without a lesson. The case recorded within the past year of a healthy chambermaid, who was immediately inoculated with tubercular matter with rapidly-following constitutional effects through a scratch on the hand, received from the sharp edge of a broken china cuspidor that a consumptive was using, is one of these cases that are to the point; so it is evident that the uncircumcised need not always wait for the degeneration of syphilis into syphilitic phthisis or syphilitic scrofula to become a consumptive, but it is within the greatest range of possibility and probability that he may become at once a consumptive through an excoriation or abrasion received during coition with a tubercular woman. So many tubercular prostitutes ply their trade, or, to be more definite, so many prostitutes become tubercular, and in its different stages follow their occupation as the only means of keeping out of the poor-house, that man runs as much if not more risk, in consorting with the class, of contracting tuberculosis than that of contracting syphilis.