There is something about syphilis that is not generally noticed; we are all well acquainted with the dire results that usually follow syphilitic infection, its course through every stage of suffering and misery, its transmission and effects in tubercular meningitis or in syphilitic affections of the mesentery through heredity in children, and of the many horrible cases of destruction of tissue, in skin, mucous membrane, cartilage, or bone, with their attending mutilations and disfigurations; but there is no record of the great number of cases, and very few physicians of any extended practice but who can recall some such cases, where, after undoubted syphilitic infection, with the usual course of primary sores and secondary eruption, the patient has suddenly blossomed out into a state of robust health that his system was an entire stranger to before the infection. The writer has, in the course of a long practice, seen a number of such results follow both the infection attended with a miliary eruption and that followed by the large small-pox-appearing eruption, both kinds being preceded by the primary sore; and these results have been observed in cases of both what are called the soft and multiple and the hard or Hunterial initial sore. Some of these cases rapidly gained in flesh, with an evident increase in the redness of their blood, increasing in vigor and strength with a very perceptibly less tendency to attacks from accidental or previously subject-to diseases.
The same result has been observed to follow an attack of small-pox with some individuals, and the writer well remembers a similar result following a very extraordinary event. The subject was a man well known among his old comrades of the First Minnesota Infantry as “Duke,” and to many of the older practitioners of Wabashaw County, of that State, as “Old Duke.” In early life he was sickly and weakly, never having fully recovered from a malarial fever contracted in the Mexican war. Coming to Minnesota, he adopted the life of a raftsman, with all the irregularities that accompanied such a life. On one occasion, after a protracted spree, feeling the need of stimulation and not having the wherewith to procure it, he secured a jar in which a snake and several other reptiles were preserved in spirits, and drank the fluid contents. He was, some days afterward, taken violently ill with a high fever and racking pains, ending in an eruption of boils that covered him from head to foot; he made a slow and tedious recovery; but when recovered he seemed to have become imbued with a constitution resembling lignum-vitæ, for a more stubborn-twisted constitution never existed than that of “Old Duke.” The power of resistance that this man developed was something wonderful. Dr. C. P. Adams, of Hastings, Minnesota, and the St. Paul physicians who were connected with the regiment well remember, though, wiry, precise, and soldierly “Duke,” who, even in the old Army of the Potomac, immersed up to his ears like the rest of the army in the mud and dirt of the encampment of Falmouth, above Fredericksburg, came out on general inspection as prim as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox, for which he received a medal for soldierly conduct and bearing.
These apparent digressions are not made either to be tedious or to weary the reader, nor without an object. They are made to show that, whereas syphilis is looked upon as such a deadly disease, and it may be said to be the sole cause of fear to the assiduous worshiper at the shrine of Venus Porcina, there is another still more fatal danger awaiting him, ambushed in the folds of the vaginal mucous membrane, or coming along silently out of the cervical canal,—like the legions of Cyrus stealing along the dry bed of the Euphrates into ancient Babylon, to fall unawares on the feasting Nebuchadnezzar on that fatal night. So, in like manner, the virus of tuberculosis, either extruding from a granular os or from its neighborhood, gradually moves down on the unsuspecting, uncircumcised, and easily inoculable-surfaced glans penis, to infect the system with a tubercular poison that has no such exceptions as those above noted, as at times are the followers of syphilis. It is not alone the individual himself that may be the sufferer from this poison, but his progeny for several generations may have to suffer for the infection thus received, just as much as they would were that infection to have been syphilitic. As before remarked, this has heretofore not sufficiently occupied the consideration of the profession, and, as it cannot certainly be denied that such a source of tubercular infection is both possible and probable, the subject is entitled to more serious and deliberate consideration than that which has heretofore been paid to it.
Tuberculosis certainly has these two channels of entrance: either through direct infection or through an evolutionary process resulting from syphilis. The appearance and vital statistics offered by the French War Office in regard to the Algierine provinces, the report of the United States Census, the opinion of Dr. Billings deduced from the census reports, the opinions of Hutchinson, Richardson, Bernheim, and many other observers, as well as the personal but unrecorded observations of many practitioners, all tend to bear testimony to the remarkable difference that exists between circumcised and uncircumcised races in regard to the ravages of consumption. Is circumcision a factor in this difference, or is it not? If it is, then circumcision should receive more attention than it has; if it is not, then we should not be idle in hunting up the cause of difference, for an ounce of prevention is certainly worth in this regard a whole pound of Koch’s lymph as a curative agent.
CHAPTER XVII.
Some Reasons for Being Circumcised.
The surgical and medical history of circumcision is intimately connected with the remotest ages, this being, in fact, the earliest surgical procedure of which we have any record. From the same records we obtain hints as to two conditions for which circumcision probably was suggested, either as a preventive or as a remedy.
Jahn, in speaking of the people by whom the early Hebrews were surrounded, mentions their idolatrous practices, and that their peculiar forms of Pagan worship were accompanied by indulgence in fornication, lascivious songs, and unnatural lust. Others of their neighbors worshiped the “hairy he-goat,” with which they also practiced all manner of abominations. Sodomy, or pederasty, seemed a sort of religious ceremony with some of these heathen nations; from a religion it necessarily became a social practice; this, in connection with the phallic practices and worship, necessitated frequent exposure of the male member. The evil results, to say nothing of the disgusting and demoralizing tendency of these practices of the Pagan, were evidently well known to the Jews. The contrast between the physique and health of the pastoral habits, out-of-door life and simple diet of the Jews, and the necessary opposite condition of health and physique due to luxury and to these practices among their neighbors, could not have escaped their attention. How much onanism had to do with the establishment of circumcision may well be conjectured. Again, the other hint is in reference to procreation, as some stress is laid to the connection between the conception of Sarah and the circumcision of Abraham. Here we have suggestions of a preventive to onanism, and a cure to male impotence when due to preputial interference.[79]
Strange as it may seem, these two important results, due to circumcision, seem to have been lost sight of for some thousands of years, as even the able works of the physicians of the latter part of the last century have nothing to say connecting onanism and circumcision. Neither the works of Tissot on male onanism nor the pioneer work of Bienville on nymphomania speak of the presence of the prepuce in the male, or of the nymphar or clitorian prepuce in the female, as being causative of, or their removal curative of, either masturbation, satyriasis, or nymphomania; moral, hygienic, and internal medication being by both these authors considered to be all that our science could offer or do to alleviate or cure this unfortunate class. It is only of late years that circumcision, in its true relations to onanism, has received full consideration. In regard to its being a cure of impotence, its recognition has been of longer duration.