Sonnini de Manoncourt, a distinguished traveller and naturalist of the eighteenth century “having examined a young girl of Egyptian origin, about eight years old, found a thick, flabby, and fleshy excrescence, covered with skin, which grew above the commissure of the labia, and hung down half an inch, resembling in size and shape the caruncle pendent from the bill of a turkey cock.”
Conditions of a similar nature are said to exist among the women of the interior of Africa, and are probably due to climatic influences, but the more common forms of disease are those of simple hypertrophy of the external parts of generation; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the surgical interference necessary for their removal has given rise to the general term of circumcision.
“Simple excision of the clitoris has been practised for very many centuries by certain nations,” and I purpose quoting some interesting observations just published by Dr. T. H. Tanner, upon the subject. His first extract is from Strabo, the geographer, A.D. 21, who, in speaking of the Egyptians, says:—“They circumcise the males and excise the females, as is the custom also among the Jews, who are of Egyptian extraction.” The custom appears to have been continued down to a recent period, and Mr. W. G. Brown,[[4]] who resided for some time at Darfour, North Africa, writing in 1779, thus alludes to it:—“The excision of females is a peculiarity with which the northern nations are less familiar; yet it would appear that this usage is more evidently founded on physical causes, and is more clearly a matter of convenience, than the circumcision of males, as it seems not to have been ordained by the precept of any inspired writer.”
“This excision is termed in Arabic ‘chafadh.’ It consists of cutting off the clitoris a little before the period of puberty, or at about the age of eight or nine years.”
Again, the Nubian traveller[[5]] Burckhardt tells us—“The daughters of the Arabs Ababde, and Djaafere, who are of Arabian origin, and inhabit the western bank of the Nile from Thebes, as high as the cataracts, and generally those of all the people to the south of Kenne and Esne (as far as Sennaar) undergo circumcision, or rather excision (excisio-clitoridis,) at the age of from three to six years: Girls thus treated are called mukhaeyt.”
But perhaps the most trustworthy account of the circumcision of females in Western Africa is that given by the late Mr. W. F. Daniel, who was a distinguished member of our own profession. He tells us that “The excisive process in Western Africa is variously performed in accordance with the usages of the different districts where it is resorted to. The operation consists either of:—
“1. Simple excision of the clitoris; 2. excision of the nymphæ; 3. excision of both nymphæ and clitoris; 4. excision of a portion of the labia pudendi, with either or all of the preceding structures.
“The history of the operation is involved in obscurity; that it was secretly inculcated as one of those gloomy rites which the female proselyte had to undergo, as a preliminary measure, prior to her initiation into those dread mythological creeds, which, in Egypt and the adjoining countries were swathed in the folds of an allegorical and almost impenetrable mysticism, is the most likely inference.” Eventually the progressive decay of the religious institutions, gradually led to its promulgation and practice among the masses of the people; for the priests, who, independent of their scientific attainments, were also well versed in medicine, might have advocated its use both in a moral and hygienic point of view, as conducive to the welfare of the female population.
I have been led into this digression by reflecting over the barbarous and unphilosophical meddling of certain practitioners of our metropolis who are, in effect, degrading our practice of surgery to the level of that of the savages we have just described, without possessing the same claim to our consideration on the score of ignorance, barbarism, and superstition. The modern antic yclept “clitoridectomy” (to which I refer), is, as the “Lancet” says, “a proceeding which, if it be useless, is a lamentable mistake, and if it be unnecessary, a cruel outrage.”
The next proposition we may fairly look for will be to imitate still further the customs of these Western Africans who, in certain tribes, whenever a girl shows any very strong indication of sexual feeling (before she is betrothed), at once proceed to produce an obliteration of her vagina by the intense inflammatory action set up by the forcible introduction of a mass of the “capsicum fructescens,” or bird pepper—to my mind not one shade more inhuman or barbarous than unsexing a woman for ever, upon an assumption which grossly libels our female population.