No. 11 IN THE PHYSICIANS’ AND STUDENTS’ READY REFERENCE SERIES
HISTORY
OF
CIRCUMCISION
FROM THE
EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT.
Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance,
with a
HISTORY OF EUNUCHISM, HERMAPHRODISM, ETC., AND OF THE DIFFERENT OPERATIONS PRACTICED UPON THE PREPUCE.
BY
P. C. REMONDINO, M.D.
(JEFFERSON),
Member of the American Medical Association, of the American Public Health Association, of the San Diego County Medical Society, of the State Board of Health of California, and of the Board of Health of the City of San Diego; Vice-President of California State Medical Society and of Southern California Medical Society, etc.
Philadelphia and London:
F. A. DAVIS, PUBLISHER.
1891.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by
F. A. DAVIS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C., U. S. A.
Philadelphia Pa., U. S. A.:
The Medical Bulletin Printing House,
1231 Filbert Street.
Hebraic Circumcision
(From an old sixeenth century Italian print in the author’s collection, representing the scene of the Holy Circumcision.)
PREFACE.
In ancient Egypt the performance of circumcision was at one time limited to the priesthood, who, in addition to the cleanliness that this operation imparted to that class, added the shaving of the whole body as a means of further purification. The nobility, royalty, and the higher warrior class seem to have adopted circumcision as well, either as a hygienic precaution or as an aristocratic prerogative and insignia. Among the Greeks we find a like practice, and we are told that in the times of Pythagoras the Greek philosophers were also circumcised, although we find no mention that the operation went beyond the intellectual class. In the United States, France, and in England, there is a class which also observe circumcision as a hygienic precaution, where, from my personal observation, I have found that circumcision is thoroughly practiced in every male member of many of the families of the class,—this being the physician class. In general conversation with physicians on this subject, it has really been surprising to see the large number who have had themselves circumcised, either through the advice of some college professor while attending lectures or as a result of their own subsequent convictions when engaged in actual practice and daily coming in contact both with the benefits that are to be derived in the way of a better physical, mental, and moral health, as well as with the many dangers and disadvantages that follow the uncircumcised,—the latter being probably the most frequent incentive and determinator,—as in many of these latter examples the operation of circumcision, with its pains, annoyances, and possible and probable dangers, sink into the most trifling insignificance in comparison to some of the results that are daily observed as the tribute that is paid by the unlucky and unhappy wearer of a prepuce for the privilege of possessing such an appendage.
There is one thing that must be admitted concerning circumcision: this being that, among medical men or men of ordinary intelligence who have had the operation performed, instead of being dissatisfied, they have extended the advantages they have themselves received, by having those in their charge likewise operated upon. The practice is now much more prevalent than is supposed, as there are many Christian families where males are regularly circumcised soon after birth, who simply do so as a hygienic measure.
For the benefit of these, who may congratulate themselves upon the dangers and annoyances that they and their families have escaped, and for the benefit of those who would run into these dangers but for timely warning, this book has been especially written. To my professional brothers the book will prove a source of instruction and recreation, for, while it contains a lot of pathology regarding the moral and physical reasons why circumcision should be performed, which might be as undigestible as a mess of Boston brown bread and beans on a French stomach, I have endeavored to make that part of the book readable and interesting. The operative chapter will be particularly useful and interesting to physicians, as I have there given a careful and impartial review of all the operative procedures,—from the most simple to the most elaborate,—besides paying more than particular attention to the subject of after-dressings. The part that relates to the natural history of man will interest all manner of people. I regret that the tabular statistics are not to be had, but in this regard we must use our best judgment from the material we have on hand; at any rate, I have tried to furnish a sufficiency of facts, so that, unless the reader is too overexacting, he will not find much difficulty in arriving at a conclusion on the subject.
P. C. Remondino, M.D.
San Diego, California, 1891.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Antiquity of Circumcision, [21]
Theories as to the Origin of Circumcision, [28]
Spread of Circumcision, [34]
Circumcision Among Savage Tribes, [42]
Infibulation, Muzzling, and Other Curious Practices, [46]
Attempts To Abolish Circumcision, [63]
Miracles and the Holy Prepuce, [70]
History of Emasculation, Castration, and Eunuchism, [82]
Philosophical Considerations Relating to Eunuchism and Medicine, [105]
Hermaphrodism and Hypospadias, [117]
Religio Medici, [134]
Hebraic Circumcision, [143]
Mezizah, the Fourth or Objectionable Act of Suction, [150]
What are the Benefits of Circumcision? [161]
Predisposition to and Exemption and Immunity from Disease, [183]
The Prepuce, Syphilis, and Phthisis, [187]
Some Reasons for Being Circumcised, [200]
The Prepuce as an Outlaw, and its Effects on the Glans, [206]
Is the Prepuce a Natural Physiological Appendage? [217]
The Prepuce, Phimosis, and Cancer, [226]
The Prepuce and Gangrene of the Penis, [236]
The Prepuce, Calculi, and other Annoyances, [248]
Reflex Neuroses and the Prepuce, [254]
Dysuria, Enuresis, and Retention of Urine, 2[75]
General Systemic Diseases Induced by the Prepuce, [284]
Surgical Operations Performed on the Prepuce, [302]
[Works and Authorities Quoted], [336]
INTRODUCTION.
This book is the amplification of a paper, the subject of which was, “A Plea for Circumcision; or, the Dangers that Arise from the Prepuce,” which was read at the meeting of the Southern California Medical Society, at Pasadena, in December, 1889. The material gathered for that paper was more than could be used in the ordinary limits of a society paper; it was gathered and ready for use, and this suggested its arrangement into book form. The subject of the paper was itself suggested by a long and personal observation of the changes made in man by circumcision. From the individual observation of cases, it was but natural to wish to enlarge the scope of our observation and comparison; this naturally led to a study of the physical characteristics of the only race that could practically be used for the purpose. This race is the Jewish race. On carefully studying into the subject, I plainly saw that much of their longevity could consistently be ascribed to their more practical humanitarianism, in caring for their poor, their sick, as well as in their generous provision for their unfortunate aged people. The social fabric of the Jewish family is also more calculated to promote long life, as, strangely as it may seem, family veneration and family love and attachment are far more strong and practical among this people than among Christians, this sentiment not being even as strong in the Christian races as it is in the Chinese or Japanese. It certainly forms as much of a part of the teachings of Christianity as it does of Judaism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, only Christians, as a mass, have practically forgotten it. The occupation followed by the Jews also in a certain degree favors longevity, and the influence on heredity induced by all these combined conditions goes for something. But it is not alone in the matter of simple longevity—although that implies considerable—that the Jewish race is found to be better situated. Actual observations show them to be exempt from many diseases which affect other races; so that it is not only that they recover more promptly, but that they are not, as a class, subjected to the loss of time by illness, or to the consequent sufferings due to illness or disease, in anything like or like ratio with other people.
There is also a less tendency to criminality, debauchery, and intemperance in the race; this, again, can in a measure be ascribed to their family influence, which even in our day has not lost that patriarchal influence which tinges the home or family life in the Old Testament. Crimes against the person or property committed by Jews are rare. They likewise do not figure in either police courts or penitentiary records; they are not inmates of our poor-houses, but, what is also singular, they are never accused of many silly crimes, such as indecent exposures, assaults on young girls; nor do they figure in any such exposures as the one recently made by the Pall Mall Gazette.
After allowing all that, which we can, in its fullest limit, to religion, family, or social habit, there is still a wide margin to be accounted for. This has naturally let the inquiry, followed in the course of this book, into a careful review of the Jewish people; into their religion and its character, its relation to other creeds, and to the world’s history; into their many wanderings, and into the dispersion, and we have even been obliged to follow them into the midst of the people among whom they have become nationed, to try, if possible, to find the cause of this racial difference in health, resistance to disease, decay, and death. It has been necessary, in following out the research, to give a condensed résumé of the religious, political, and social condition of the Jewish commonwealth, which, although in a state of dispersion, still exists. I need offer no apology for the extended notice this has received in the course of the book. We read with increasing interest either Hallam or May, Buckle or Guizot, through the spasmodic, halting, retrograding, advancing, erratic, aimless, and accidental phases that England has plowed through, from the days of goutless, simple, and chaste, but barbarian England of the Saxons, to the present civilized, enlightened, gouty, “Darkest England” of General Booth; and, after all is said and done, we are no wiser in any practical resulting good. We simply know that the English people, so to speak, have, as it were, gone through the figures of some social aspects, as if dancing the “Lancers,” with its forward and back movements, gallop, etc., and have finally sat down, better dressed and better housed, but in an acquired state of moral and physical degeneration. The Briton of Queen Victoria is not the Briton of Queen Boadicea, either morally or physically. On the other hand, the system of sociological tables adopted by Herbert Spencer would have but little to record for some six thousand years—either in religion, morals, or physique—as making any changes in the history of that simple people which, in the mountainous regions of Ur, in distant Armenia, started on its pilgrimage of life and racial existence; in one branch of the family—that of Ishmael—the changes to be recorded are so invisible that its descendants may really be said to live to-day as they lived then. So that I do not feel that I need to apologize for the space I have given to this subject in the course of the book. The causes that make these racial distinctions should be of interest alike to the moralist, theologist, sociologist, and to the physician.
Ecclesiastical writers and moralists, as well as writers of fiction or dramatizers, can write on anything they please, and it is eagerly taken up and read by the people generally, either of high or low degree, alike; and somehow these people seem never to require an apology on the part of the author, for having attempted rapes, seductions, or even unavoidable fornication committed through the leaves of the story, or having it imaginably take place between acts on the stage. But if the physician writes a book touching anything connected with the generative functions, and with the best intent and for the good of humanity, he is expected to make some prefatory apology. He is supposed to address a public who all of a sudden have become intensely moral and extremely sensitive in their modesty. Why things are thus I cannot explain. They are so, nevertheless. From the time that the celebrated Astruc wrote his treatise on female diseases, near the end of the seventeenth century,—who felt compelled by the extreme modesty of the people in this particular—but who, outside of medicine, were about as virtuous as the average Tabby or Tom cats in the midnight hour—to write the chapter touching on nymphomania in Latin, so as not to shock the morbidly sensitive modesty of the French nobility, who then enjoyed Le Droit de cuissage,—down through to Bienville, who wrote the first extended work on nymphomania, and Tissot, who first broached the subject and the danger of Onanism, all have felt that they must stop on the threshold and “apologize.” Tissot, however, seemed to possess a robust and a plain Hippocratic mind, and as he apologized he could not help but see the ridiculousness of so doing, as in the preface to his work we find the following: “Shall we remain silent on so important a subject? By no means. The sacred authors, the Fathers of the Church, who present their thoughts in living words, and ecclesiastical authors have not felt that silence was best. I have followed their example, and shall exclaim, with St. Augustine, ‘If what I have written scandalizes any prudish persons, let them rather accuse the turpitude of their own thoughts than the words I have been obliged to use.’”
For my part, I think that people who can go to the theatre and enjoy “As in a Looking-Glass,” and witness some of the satyrical or billy-goat traits of humanity so graphically exhibited in “La Tosca,” with evident satisfaction; or attend the more robust plays of “Virginius” or of “Galba, the Gladiator,” with all its suggestions of the Cæsarian section, and the lust and the fornications of an intensely animal Roman empress, without the destruction of their moral equilibrium or tending to induce in them a disposition to commit a rape on the first met,—I think such people can be safely intrusted to read this book.
And as to the reading public, there are but few general readers who could honestly plead an ignorance of the “Decameron,” Balzac, La Fontaine, “Heptameron,” Crébillon fils, or of matter-of-fact Monsieur le Docteur Maitre Rabelais,—works which, more or less, carry a moral instruction in every tale, which, like the tales of the “Malice of Women,” in the unexpurged edition of the literal translation of the “Arabian Nights,” contains much more of practical moral lessons, even if in the flowery and warm, spiced language of the Orient, than any supposed nastiness, on account of which they are classed among the prohibited. To these, and the readers of Amelie Rives’s books, or other intensely realistic literature, I need not imitate the warning of Ansonius, who warned his readers on the threshold of a part of his book to “stop and consider well their strength before proceeding with its lecture.” Metaphorically speaking, the general theatre-going, or modern literature-reading public, can be considered pretty callous and morally bullet proof. I shall therefore make no apology.
Some fault may, perhaps, be found with some of the occasional style of the book, or with some of the subjects used to illustrate a principle. To the extremely wise, good, and scientific, these illustrations were unnecessary; this need hardly be mentioned; and the passages which to some may prove objectionable were not intended for them, either with the expectation of delighting them or with the purpose of shocking them. These passages, they can easily avoid. This book, however, was written that it might be read: not only read by the Solon, Socrates, Plato, or Seneca of the laity or the profession, but even by the billy-goated dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink at the watering-trough. Human weakness and perversity is silly, but it is sillier to ignore that it exists. So, for the sake of boring and driving a few solid facts into the otherwise undigesting and unthinking, as well as primarily obdurate understanding of the untutored plebeian, I ask the indulgence of the intelligent and broad-minded as well as the easily inducted reader. Cleopatra was smuggled into Cæsar’s presence in a roll of tapestry; the Greeks introduced their men into Troy by means of a wooden horse; and the discoverer of the broad Pacific Ocean made his escape from his importunate creditors disguised as a cask of merchandise. So, when we wish to accomplish an object, we must adopt appropriate means, even if they may apparently seem to have an entirely diametrically opposite object. The Athenian, Themistocles, when wishing to make the battle of Salamis decisive, was inspired with the idea of sending word to the Persian monarch that the Greeks were trying to escape, advising him to block the passage; this saved Greece.
There is a weird and ghostly but interesting tale connected with the Moslem conquest of Spain, of how Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings, when in trouble and worry, repaired to an old castle, in the secret recesses of which was a magic table whereon would pass in grim procession the different events of the future of Spain; as he gazed on the enchanted table he there saw his own ruin and his country’s and nation’s subjugation. Anatomy is generally called a dry study, but, like the enchanted brazen table in the ancient Gothic castle, it tells a no less weird or interesting tale of the past. Its revelations lighten up a long vista, through the thousands of years through which the human species has evolved from its earliest appearance on earth, gradually working up through the different evolutionary processes to what is to-day supposed to be the acme of perfection as seen in the Indo-European and Semitic races of man. Anatomy points to the rudiment—still lingering, now and then still appearing in some one man and without a trace in the next—of that climbing muscle which shows man in the past either nervously escaping up the trunk of a tree in his flight from many of the carnivorous animals with whom he was contemporary, or, as the shades of night were beginning to gather around him, we again see him by the aid of these muscles leisurely climbing up to some hospitable fork in the tree, where the robust habits of the age allowed him to find a comfortable resting-place; protected from the dew of the night by the overhanging branches and from the prowling hyena by the height of the tree, he passed the night in security. The now useless ear-muscles, as well as the equally useless series of muscles about the nose, also tell us of a movable, flapping ear capable of being turned in any direction to catch the sound of approaching danger, as well as of a movable and dilated nostril that scented danger from afar,—the olfactory sense at one time having a different function and more essential to life than that of merely noting the differential aroma emitted by segars or cups of Mocha or Java, and the ear being then used for some more useful purpose than having its tympanum tortured by Wagnerian discordant sounds. Our ancestors might not have been a very handsome set, nor, judging from the Neanderthal skull, could they have had a very winning physiognomy, but they were a very hardy and self-reliant set of men. Nature—always careful that nothing should interfere with the procreative functions—had provided him with a sheath or prepuce, wherein he carried his procreative organ safely out of harm’s way, in wild steeple-chases through thorny briars and bramble-brakes, or, when hardly pushed, and not able to climb quickly a tree of his own choice, he was by circumstances forced up the sides of some rough-barked or thorny tree. This leathery pouch also protected him from the many leeches, small aquatic lizards, or other animals that infested the marshes or rivers through which he had at times to wade or swim; or served as a protection from the bites of ants or other vermin when, tired, he rested on his haunches on some mossy bank or sand-hill.
Man has now no use for any of these necessaries of a long-past age,—an age so remote that the speculations of Ernest Renan regarding the differences between the Semitic race of Shem and the idolatrous descendants of Ham, away off in the far mountains and valleys of Asia lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates, seem more as if he were discussing an event of yesterday than something which is considered contemporary with our earlier history,—and we find them disappearing, disuse gradually producing an obliteration of this tissue in some cases, and the modifying influence of evolution producing it in others; the climbing muscle, probably the oldest remnant and legacy that has descended from our long-haired and muscular ancestry, is the best example of disappearance caused by disuse, while the effectual disappearance of the prepuce in many cases shows that in that regard there exists a marked difference in the evolutionary march among different individuals.
There is a strange and unaccountable condition of things, however, connected with the prepuce that does not exist with the other vestiges of our arboreal or sylvan existence. Firstly, the other conditions have nothing that interferes with their disappearance; whereas the prepuce, by its mechanical construction and the expanding portions which it incloses, tends at times rather to its exaggerated development than to its disappearance. Again, whereas the other vestiges have no injury that they inflict by their presence, or danger that they cause their possessors to run, the prepuce is from time of birth a source of annoyance, danger, suffering, and death. Then, again, the other conditions are not more developed at birth; whereas the prepuce seems, in our pre-natal life, to have an unusual and unseen-for-use existence, being in bulk out of all proportion to the organ it is intended to cover. Speculation as to its existence is as unprolific of results as any we may indulge in regarding the nature, object, or uses of that other evolutionary appendage, the appendix vermiformis, the recollection of whose existence always adds an extra flavor to tomatoes, figs, or any other small-seeded fruits.
We may well exclaim, as we behold this appendage to man,—now of no use in health and of the most doubtful assistance to the very organ it was intended to protect, when that organ, through its iniquitous tastes, has got itself into trouble, and, Job-like, is lying repentant and sick in its many wrappings of lint, with perhaps its companions in crime imprisoned in a suspensory bandage,—what is this prepuce? Whence, why, where, and whither? At times, Nature, as if impatient of the slow march of gradual evolution, and exasperated at this persistent and useless as well as dangerous relic of a far-distant prehistoric age, takes things in her own hands and induces a sloughing to take place, which rids it of its annoyance. In the far-off land of Ur, among the mountainous regions of Kurdistan, something over six thousand years ago, the fathers of the Hebrew race, inspired by a wisdom that could be nothing less than of divine origin, forestalled the process of evolution by establishing the rite of circumcision. Whether this has been beneficial or injurious to the race will be, in a measure, the object of the discussion in this book.
One object of this book is to furnish my professional brothers with some embodied facts that they may use in convincing the laity in many cases where they themselves are convinced that circumcision is absolutely necessary; but, having nothing in their text-books to back up their opinion with, their explanations are too apt to pass for their mere unfounded personal view of the matter. If the patient, or the parents of the patient, ask the physician for his authority, he is at a loss, as there is nothing that deals with the subject in any extended manner; so that this book has been written in as plain English as the subject-matter could possibly allow, so that non-professionals could easily read and understand it. I have often felt the need of such a work; people can understand emergency or accident surgery, military surgery, or reparative surgery, but such a thing as surgery to remedy a seemingly medical disease, or what might be called the preventive practice of surgery, is something they cannot understand. First, and not the least, among the incentives to skepticism on this subject is the unwelcome fact of a surgical operation, which, no matter how trivial it may seem to the surgeon, is a matter of considerable magnitude to the patient, his parents, or friends; there are risks, pain, worry, annoyances, and expenses to be undergone,—considerations which, either singly or unitedly, often lead one to reason against the operation, even when otherwise convinced of its need or utility.
The hardest to convince are those, however, who insist on having a four-and-a-half-foot-gauge fact driven through their two-foot-gated understanding, without it ever occurring to them that the gate, and not the fact, is the faulty article, Some of these gentry are very unconvincible. They at times remind one of that description given by Carlyle in regard to one of the Georges, who found himself, when Prince of Wales, leading an army in Flanders, and actually engaged in a battle. His Royal Highness was on foot, and was seen standing facing the enemy, with outstretched legs, like a Colossus of Rhodes, impassive and stolid,—the very impersonification of Dutch courage and aggressiveness. There he stood, unconscious whether he was at the head of an army or single attendant; he might be overridden and annihilated, overturned and expunged, but there he would most assuredly stand and fall, if need be; overwhelming squadrons, by their impetus and weight, might ride him down and crush him; but one thing was most certain, this certain fact being that he never could be made to retreat or advance, as no impression from front or rear could convince him of the necessity of either.
Then, there is our statistical friend, who cannot discriminate between the exception and the rule by any common-sense deductions. He must have all the authentic, carefully-compiled statistics before he can allow himself to form any opinion. As long as there is the smallest fraction of a decimal unaccounted for in a mathematical way, this individual is inconvincible. These men pride themselves upon being methodically exact; they express their willingness to be convinced if you can present acceptable proofs; but, trying to present simple rational proofs to these individuals is considerably like presenting a meal of boiled pork and cabbage to a confirmed and hypochondriacal dyspeptic,—it only increases their mental dyspepsia.
Had Columbus waited to discover America, or had Galileo waited to proclaim the motion of the earth, until authorized to a serious consideration of the matter by properly-tabled statistics, they would have waited a long, long time; and, it may be added, the inconveniences that attend the proving of a negative will so interfere with the proper arrangement of statistical matter which relates to the prepuce and circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary preputial extinction will take place,—probably contemporary with the existence of Bulwer’s “Coming Race,”—but not at a too remote period for the proper and satisfactory tabulation of the statistics.
The ideas of the etiology and pathological processes through which we journey,—from a condition of health and good feeling to one of disease, miserable feeling, and death,—as described in, or rather as they control the sentiment and policy of, this work, are such as have been followed by Hutchinson, Fothergill, Beale, Black, Albutt, and Richardson, so that if I have totally ignored the old conventional systems, with their hide-bound classification of diseases to control the etiology, I have not done so without some reliable authority. In studying the etiology of diseases we have, as a rule, been content to accept the disease when fully formed and properly labeled, being apparently satisfied with beginning our investigation not at the initial point of departure from health, but at some distant point from this, at the point where this departure has elaborated itself, on favorable ground, into a tangible general or local disease. As truthfully observed by T. Clifford Albutt: “The philosophic inquirer is not satisfied to know that a person is suffering, for example, from a cancer. He desires to know why he is so suffering,—that is, what are the processes which necessarily precede or follow it. He wishes to include this phenomena, now isolated, in a series of which it must necessarily be but a member, to trace the period of which it must be but a phase. He believes that diseased processes have their evolution and the laws of it, as have other natural processes, and he believes that these are fixed and knowable.” To do this, the physician must travel beyond the beaten path of etiology as found in our text-books. He must follow Hutchinson in the train of reasoning that elucidates the pre-cancerous stage of cancer, or tread in the path followed by Sir Lionel Beale, in finding that the cause of disease depends on a blood change and the developmental defect, or the tendency or inherent weakness of the affected part or organ; to fully appreciate the inherent etiological factors that reside in man, and which constitute the tendency to disease or premature decay and death, we must also be able to follow Canstatt, Day, Rostan, Charcot, Rush, Cheyne, Humphry, or Reveille-Parise into the study of the different conditions which, though normal, are nevertheless factors of a slow or a long life. We must also be able to appreciate fully the value of that interdependence of each part of our organism, which often, owing to a want of equilibrium of strength and resistance in some part when compared to the rest, causes the whole to give way, just as a flaw in a levee will cause the whole of the solidly-constructed mass to give way, or a demoralized regiment may entail the utter rout of an army. As described by George Murray Humphry, in his instructive work on “Old Age,” at page 11:—
“The first requisite for longevity must clearly be an inherent or inborn quality of endurance, of steady, persistent nutritive force, which includes reparative force and resistance to disturbing agencies, and a good proportion or balance between the several organs. Each organ must be sound in itself, and its strength must have a due relation to the strength of the other organs. If the heart and the digestive system be disproportionately strong, they will overload and oppress the other organs, one of which will soon give way; and, as the strength of the human body, like that of a chain, is to be measured by its weaker link, one disproportionately feeble organ endangers or destroys the whole. The second requisite is freedom from exposure to the various casualties, indiscretions, and other causes of disease to which illness and early death are so much due.”
In following out our study of diseases, we have been too closely narrowed down by the old symptomatic story of disease; we have too much treated surface symptoms, and neglected to study the man and his surroundings as a whole; we have overlooked the fact that there exists a geographical fatalism in a physical sense as well as the existence of the influence of that climatic fatalism so well described by Alfred Haviland, and the presence of a fatalism of individual constitution as well, which is either inherited or acquired. The idea that Charcot elaborates, that, as the year passes successively through the hot and the cold, through the dry and the wet season, with advancing age the human body undergoes like changes, and diseases assume certain characteristics, are also points that are overlooked; and nowhere is this latter view seen to be more neglected than in the relations the prepuce bears to infancy, prime and old age, as will be more fully explained in the chapters in this book which treat of cancer and gangrene. Admitting that Haviland has exaggerated the influence of climate as an etiological factor in its specific influence in producing certain diseases; or that M. Taine claims more than he should for his “Thèorie des Milieux,” or influence of surroundings; or that Hutchinson has drawn the hereditary and pedigreeal fatherhood of disease too finely; it must also be admitted that the solid, tangible truths upon which these authors have founded their premises are plainly visible to the most skeptical; the architectural details of the superstructure may be defective, but the foundation is permanent.
From the above outline it will be easier for the reader to follow out the reasons, or the whys or wherefores, of the views expressed on medicine in the course of the book; and, although I do not wish to enter the medical field like a Peter the Hermit on a new crusade, to lure thousands into the hands of the circumcisers, nor, as a new Mohammed, promise the eternal bliss and glory of the seventh heaven to all the circumcised, I ask of my professional brothers a calm and unprejudiced perusal of the tangible and authentic facts that I have honestly gathered and conscientiously commented upon from my field of vision, which will be plainly presented in the following pages. I simply have given the facts and my impressions: the reader is at liberty to draw his own conclusions.
If I have been too tedious in the multiplication of incidents in support of certain views, I must remind the reader that the verdict goes to him who has the preponderance of testimony, and that many a lawsuit is lost from the neglect, on the part of the loser, to secure all the available testimony. Having brought the subject of circumcision before the bar of public opinion, as well as that of my professional brother, I would but illy do justice to the subject at the bar, or to myself, not to properly present the case; as it was remarked by Napoleon, “God is on the side of the heaviest artillery,” and he who loses a battle for want of guns should not rail at Providence if, having them on hand, he has neglected to bring them into action.
The reasons for the existence of the book will become self-evident as the reader labors through the medical part of the work. Our text-books are, as a class, even those on diseases of children as a specialty, singularly and unpardonably silent and deficient on the subject of either the prepuce and the diseases to which it leads, or circumcision; and even our surgical works are not sufficiently explicit, as they deal more with the developed disease and the operative measures for its removal than on any preventive surgery or medicine. Our works on medicine are equally silent, and, although from a perusal of the latter part of the book the prepuce and circumcision will be seen to have considerable bearing on the production and nature of phthisis, this subject would, owing to our strabismic way of studying medicine, look most singularly out of place in a work devoted to diseases of the lungs or throat. Owing to this poverty of literature on the subject, and that the library of the average practitioner could therefore not furnish all the data relating to it that the profession have in their possession, a book of this nature will furnish them the required material whereupon to form the basis of an opinion on the subject.
To argue that the prepuce is not such a deadly appendage because so many escape alive and well who are uncircumcised, would be as logical as to assume that Lee’s chief of artillery neglected to properly place his guns on the heights back of Fredericksburg. He had asserted, the night before the battle, that not a chicken could live on the intervening plateau between the heights and the town. On the next day, when these guns opened their fire, the Federals were unable to reach the heights, while many men were for hours in the iron hail-sweeping discharges of that artillery that mowed them down by whole ranks, and yet the majority escaped alive. We take the middle ground, and, while admitting that many escape alive with a prepuce, claim that more are crippled than are visibly seen, as, like Bret Harte’s “Heathen Chinee,” the ways of the prepuce are dark and mysterious as well as peculiar.
A discussion of the relative merits of religious creeds, when considered in relation to health, has been, from the nature of the subject of the book, unavoidable. Modern Christianity but very imperfectly explains why this rite was either neglected or abolished. Frequent reference is made to what Saint Paul said and did, but, as Saint Paul was not one of the Disciples, it is inexplicable wherefrom he received his authority in this matter, seeing that the Disciples themselves had no new views on the subject. To the student who prefers to study his subject from all its aspects, the question naturally arises, “Where, when, and why came the authority that abolished this rite?” There is one probable explanation, this being that Paul, who was the real promulgator of Gentile Christianity, had to establish his creed among an uncircumcised race; although, as we shall see, devotees have not scrupled to sacrifice their virility in the hope of being more acceptable to God and to be better able to observe His commandments, and others, in their blind bigotry, have not objected to sitting naked on sand-hills, with a six-inch iron ring passed through the prepuce, it is very evident that the Apostle Paul’s good sense showed him the uselessness of attempting to found the new creed, and at the same time hold on to the truly distinctive marking of Judaism among Gentiles, the Hebrew race being those among whom he found the least converts, as even the Disciples and Apostles in Palestine disagreed with him. In the words of Dr. I. M. Wise, it was impossible for the Palestine Apostles, or their flock, either to acknowledge Paul as one of their own set or submit to his teaching; for they obeyed the Law and he abolished it; they were sent to the house of Israel only, and Paul sought the Gentiles with the message that the Covenant and the Law were at an end; they had one gospel story and he another; they prophesied the speedy return of the Master and a restoration of the throne of David in the kingdom of heaven, and he prophesied the end of the world and the last day of judgment to be at hand; they forbade their converts to eat of unclean food, and especially of the sacrificial meats of the Pagans, and he made light of both, as well as of the Sabbath and circumcision. In the attempted reconciliation that subsequently took place in Jerusalem at the house of James, the Jacob of Kaphersamia of the Talmud, Paul was charged by the synod of Jewish Christians “with disregarding the Law, forsaking the teachings of Moses, and attempting to abolish circumcision.” He was bid to recant and undergo humiliation with four other Nazarenes, that it might be known that he walked orderly and observed the Law; Paul submitted to all that was demanded.
This, in short, with the exception of the sayings of Paul on the subject, which are all secondary considerations, is really all that there is relating to the abolishment of circumcision by the Christians. The real Disciples and Apostles believed in Jesus with as much fervor as Paul, but it is singular that they who were with the Master should always have insisted on the observance of the Law, while Paul as energetically insisted on its abolishment.
From these premises, I have seen fit to inquire into the relative merits of the three religions practiced by what we call the civilized nations, as they affect man morally, physically, and mentally. I have given the facts, my impressions, and reasons for being so impressed; from these, the reader can easily see that religion has more to do with man’s temporal existence than is generally believed; its discussion is not, therefore, out of place in this book.
Repetitions in the course of the work have been unavoidable. This is not a novel nor a work of fiction, and wherever the want of repetition would have been an injury, either to the proper representation of a fact or a principle, the repetition has not been avoided. In describing the operations, I had desired to avoid any too numerous descriptions, as that is confusing, but have thought it best to give a number, as the reader will thereby obtain the views of the different operators, the mode of the operation often being an index to the view of the operator in regard to the needs or utility of a prepuce. In the general plan of the work, I have adopted the idea and the historical relation carried out by Bergmann, of Strasburg, who included all the mutilations practiced on the genitals while discussing the subject of circumcision, they being, in the originality of performance, somewhat intimately connected; this also tends to make the subject more interesting as a contribution to the natural history of man,—something in which all intelligent persons are more or less interested.
P. C. Remondino, M.D.
San Diego, California.
Egyptian Circumcision.
(From Chabas and Ebers’ description of the bas-relief found in the temple of Khons, near the great temple of Maut, at Karnac.)
CHAPTER I.
Antiquity of Circumcision.
If the ceremonials of the Catholic Church or the High Church Episcopalians carry us back into the depths of antiquity, or, as remarked by Frothingham, that the ceremonies of St. Peter, at Rome, carried him back to the mysteries of Eulesis, to the sacrificial rites of ancient Phœnicia, to what misty antiquity does not the contemplation of the rite of circumcision take us? The Alexandrian library, with its vast collection of precious records, could probably have furnished us some information as to its origin and antiquity; but Moslem fanaticism, with its belief in the all-sufficiency and infallibility of the Koran, was the destruction of that wonderful repository. We must now depend wholly on the relation of the Old Testament or on what has since been written by the Greek and Italian historians as to its origin and practices. The Egyptian monuments and their hyeroglyphics give us no information on the subject further back than the reign of Rameses II; while the oft-quoted Herodotus wrote some fourteen centuries after the Old Testament relation, and Strabo and Diodorus some nineteen centuries after the same chronicler. We have, therefore, in their chronological order, first, the relation of the Bible; then the Egyptian monuments and their revelations; and, thirdly, the information gathered by Pythagoras, Herodotus, and other philosophers and historians. To these three sources we may add the misty mixture of tradition and mythological events, whose beginnings as to period of time are indefinite. These are the sources from which we are to determine the origin and antiquity as well as the character of the rite.
Voltaire found in the subject of circumcision one that he could not satisfactorily make enter into his peculiar system of general philosophy. For some reason, he did not wish that the Israelites should have the credit of its introduction; were he to have admitted that, he would have had to explain away the divine origin of the rite,—something that the Hebrew has tenaciously held for over thirty-seven centuries. Voltaire thought it would simplify the subject by making it originate with the Egyptians, from whom the Hebrews were to borrow it. To do this he adopted the relation of Herodotus on the subject. His treatment of the Jewish race, however, brought out a strong antagonism from those people to his attacks, and in a volume entitled, “Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire,”—being a series of criticisms on his aspersions on the race and on the writings of the Old Testament (written by a number of Portuguese, German, and Polish Jews then residing in Holland[1]),—they proved conclusively that the Phœnicians had borrowed the rite from the Israelites, as they (the Phœnicians) had practiced the rite on the newborn, whereas, had they followed the Egyptian rite, they would have only circumcised the child after its having passed its thirteenth year,—these being the distinctive differences between the Jewish and Egyptian rites.
Luckily, in the small temple of Khons, which formed an annex to the greater temple of Maut, at Karnac, there was found a bas-relief, partly perfect, which goes far toward giving light on the subject of Egyptian circumcision. The upper part of the sculpture was so defaced that the upper portions of four of the five figures were destroyed, but the lower portions were so perfect in every detail as to furnish a full history of the age of the candidates for the rite and the manner of its performance. It is further interesting from the fact that it establishes also the time during which the rite was so performed. M. Chabas and Dr. Ebers argue, from the founder of the temple having been Rameses II, that the sculpture refers to the circumcision of two of his children. The knife appears to be a stone implement, and the operator kneels in front of the child, who is standing, while a matron supports him in a kneeling posture, and she holds his hands from behind him.[2] In this bas-relief we can see the great difference that existed between the two forms of the operation, that of the Hebrews being performed, as a rule, on the eighth day after birth, while in the bas-relief they are ten or twelve years old.
Although tradition and mythology veil past events in more or less obscurity, they do, in regard to circumcision, furnish considerable explanatory light on matters which would be otherwise hard to reconcile. Circumcision has been performed by the Chippeways, on the Upper Mississippi, and its modifications were performed among the Mexicans, Central Americans, and some South American tribes of Indians, as well as among many of the natives dwelling among the islands of the Pacific Archipelago. There is a tradition, mentioned by Donnelly in connection with the sunken continent of Atlantis, that Ouranos, one of the Atlantean kings, ordered his whole army to be circumcised that they might escape a fatal scourge then decimating the people to their westward.[3] This tradition tells us that the hygienic benefits of circumcision were recognized antediluvian facts, as it also points out the way by which circumcision traveled westward across to the Western World. As Donnelly has pointed out, many of the Americans possessed not only traditions, habits, and customs that must have come from the Old World, but the similarity of many words and their meaning that exists between some of the American languages and those of the indigenous inhabitants that have still their remains in spots on the southwestern shores of Europe—the ancient Armorica whose colony in Wales still retains its ancient words—leaves no room for doubt that at one time a landed highway existed between the two worlds. The Mandans, on the Upper Missouri, have many words of undoubted Armorican origin in their vocabulary,[4] just as the Chiapenec, of Central America, contains its principal words denotive of deity, family relations, and many conditions of life that are identically the same as in the Hebrew,[5] the name of father, son, daughter, God, king, and rich being essentially the same in the two languages. It must have been more than a passing coincidence that gives the Mandans some of their most expressive words from the Welsh, or that gave to Central America many cities bearing analogous names with the cities of Armenia.[6] Canadian names of localities, as well as those of the Mississippi Valley, denote the French origin of their pioneers, as well as the names of Upper California denote the nationality and creed of its first settlers. So that there is nothing strange in asserting that American civilization and many of the customs as found in the fifteenth century by the early Spanish discoverers were nothing more than the remains of ancient and modified Phœnician civilization, among which figured circumcision.
Dr. A. B. Arnold, of Baltimore, argues that, with the present state of our anthropological knowledge and the material that research has been able to furnish, we need no longer be surprised to find customs, laws, and morals, among nations living in regions of the world widely apart from each other, which betray an identity of origin and development, and that beliefs and institutions, whether wise or aberrant, grow up under apparently dissimilar circumstances, circumcision forming no exception.[7] Dr. Arnold leaves too much to chance. It is hardly likely that the similarity that existed between the architecture of the Phœnicians and the Central Americans, as evinced in their arches; in the beginning of the century on the 26th of February; the advancement and interest taken in astronomical science; the coexistence of pyramids in Egypt and Central America; that five Armenian cities should have their namesakes in Central America, should all be a matter of accident. The historiographer of the Canary Islands, M. Benshalet, considers that those islands once formed a part of the great continent to its west; this has been verified by the discovery of many sculptured symbols, similar in the Canaries and on the shores of Lake Superior, as well as by the discovery of a mummy in the Canaries with sandals whose exact counterparts were found in Central America.[8] A compound word used to signify the Great Spirit being found identical in the Welsh and Mandan languages, each requiring five distinct sounds to pronounce, words as intricate as the passwords of secret societies, can hardly be said to be the result of chance.[9] There must, at some remote period, have existed some communication between the ancestors of these Missouri Mandans and the shores of ancient Armorica; the ancestors of these Mandans may have then been living farther to the east; they even may have then been a tribe of since lost Atlantis; but the analogy, not only in regard to the word just mentioned,—Maho-peneta, of the Welsh and Mandan,—but in the similarity of the pronouns of both languages, and the existence of the idea of the counterpart of the sacred white bull of the Egyptians being found among the Dakotas, or Sioux, all point to the fact that these people, in common with the rest of the Americans, originally came from the East; from whence came their languages, manners, customs, rites, and what civilization they possessed, among which circumcision has, through the mist of centuries, held its own in some shape or other.
That some terrible catastrophe occurred to divide the hemispheres is evident; the Western World remaining stationary in its civilization and retaining the customs and rites of the times as evidence of their origin. With this view of the case, the existence of circumcision as found among the inhabitants of the West can easily be traced to its origin among the hills of Chaldea. The ancient traditions and mythological relations of the Egyptians in regard to the great nation to the West are amply verified by the deep-sea soundings of the “Challenger,” the “Dolphin,” and the “Gazelle,” which plainly indicate the presence of a submarine plateau that once formed the continent of Atlantis, whose only visible evidence above the waves of the boisterous Atlantic is the Azores and the remains of Phœnician civilization among the Americans.
Professor Worman, of Brooklyn, scouts the idea that circumcision was ever connected in any way or that it originated in any of the rites connected with phallic worship.[10] Bergmann,[11] of Strasburg, however, not only claims circumcision to be a direct result of phallic worship, but looks upon the rite as something that has been reached by what may be termed a gradual evolutionary process of manners, customs, and society, from the time of what is termed the hero-warrior period of traditional history, when war and the clashing of shields and sword or spear were the main delights and occupations of man. It is strange to note what difference must have existed between these hero-warriors in regard to their ideas of manliness; some were brutal and fiendish, whilst others were magnanimous. McPherson, the historiographer of early Britain, cannot help but contrast the superior manliness of the heroes of Ossian in his graphic description of the ancient Caledonians, when compared to the brutality of Homer’s Greek heroes. The traditions upon which Bergmann undertakes to found the origin of the rite of circumcision are all connected with the inhuman and brutish passions that animated our barbarous ancestry. The first incident given is the Egyptian traditional tragedy, which was, in all probability, the initial point of that phallic worship which, with increasing debauchery, assisted in the final demoralization of Rome and Greece, after its introduction into those countries.
CHAPTER II.
Theories as to the Origin of Circumcision.
We are told that in battle man looked upon the vanquished as unfit to bear the name of man, looking upon the weakness or want of skill which contributed to their defeat as something effeminate. The victor then proceeded by a very summary and effective mode, done in the most primitive and expeditious manner, to render his victim as much like a female as possible to all outward appearances; this was accomplished by a removal at one sweep of all the organs of generation, the phallus being generally retained as a trophy,—a practice which was also carried into effect with dead enemies, to show that the victor had vanquished men. It has been the practice from time immemorial for a victor to carry off some portion of the body of his victim or defeated enemy, as a mark or testimony of his prowess; it was either a hand, head or scalp, lower jaw, or finger. The carrying off of the phallus or virile member was considered the most conclusive proof of the nature of the vanquished, and, as it established the sex, it conferred a greater title to bravery and skill than a mere collection of hands or scalps, which would not denote the sex. In conformity with this custom, we find that Osiris, when he returned to Egypt and found that Typhon had fomented dissension in his absence, being vanquished by the latter in the conflict that followed, was dismembered and cut into pieces, the followers of Typhon each securing a piece and Typhon himself securing the phallus or generative member. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, seems in turn to have secured the control of government, and, having secured all the pieces of the dissected Osiris except the phallus,—Typhon having fled with that, and, according to some traditions, having thrown it into the sea,—Isis ordered that statues should be constructed, each to contain a piece of the unfortunate Osiris, who should thereafter be worshiped as a god, and that the priesthood should choose from among the animals some one kind which should thereafter be considered sacred. The phallus which was missing was ordered special worship, with more marked solemnities and mysteries; from this originated the phallic worship and the sacredness of the white bull, Apis, among the Egyptians, which was chosen to represent Osiris.
By gradual evolution and the progress of society, the cultivation of the ground and the need of menials, warriors found some other use for their prisoners taken in strife besides merely cutting off the phallus as a trophy; these prisoners began to have some intrinsic value. From this a change came about; the warrior instinct, however, still claimed that the vanquished, even if a slave, should still convey or carry some sign of servitude. The original idea of the ablation of the phallus was to emasculate the victim; investigation developed the idea that the same object could be accomplished by castration, an operation which also finally reached a tolerable state of perfection through different stages of evolution, it first being performed by a complete removal of the whole scrotum and contents. This operation, with the ignorance of the times in regard to stopping hæmorrhage, was, however, accompanied by a large mortality, and it finally evolved into the simple removal of the gland, or its obliteration by pressure or violence. Bergmann conveys the idea that circumcision was at one time the indestructible marking and the distinctive feature of the slave, the mind of the period not being able to emancipate itself from the idea that the genitals must in some manner be mutilated, not being able to conceive any other degrading mark of manhood which barbarians felt they must inflict on slaves.
The generally accepted idea in regard to the physical mutilation of captives taken in war, or that some token from the body of the vanquished must be carried off by the victor, has not only the support of tradition and monumental sculptured evidence, but its practice is still in vogue among many races. Among the ancient Scythians, only the warriors who returned from the battle or foray with the heads of the enemy were entitled to a share in the spoils. Among the modern Berbers it is still a practice for a young man, on proposing marriage, to exhibit to his prospective father-in-law the virile members of all the enemies he has overcome, as evidence of his manhood and right to the title of warrior. The Abyssinians and some of the negro tribes on the Guinea coast still follow the custom of securing the phallus of a fallen foe. However barbarous this practice may seem, its actual performance is only secondary, the primary motive being that the warrior wished to prove that he had been there, engaged in actual strife, and that his enemy had been overcome. The writer remembers that, after one of the battles in the West during the late war, many letters arrived in his locality with pieces of the garments or locks of the hair of the unfortunate Confederate general, Zollikoffer, who had been slain in the battle; a disposition in the warrior, seemingly still existing, such as animated the old Egyptians. On an old Egyptian monument,—that of Osymandyas,—Diodorus noticed a mural sculpture, a bas-relief representing prisoners of war, either in chains or bound with cords, being registered by a royal scribe preparatory to losing either the right hand or the phallus, a pile of which is visible in one corner of the foreground; from this sculpture we learn that the practice was not only an individual performance, but that it was a national usage among the Egyptians as well, who subjected, at times, their vanquished foes to its ordeal in a wholesale but business-like manner.
Bergmann argues that the Israelites were given to like practices, and cites the incident wherein David brought two hundred prepuces—as evidence of his having slaughtered that number of Philistines—to Saul, as a mark of his being worthy to be his son-in-law. He argues that, whereas many have made that Old Testament passage to read “two hundred prepuces,” it should have read “two hundred virile members” which David and his companions had cut off from the Philistines, the word orloth meaning the virile member, and not the prepuce. That Israelitish circumcision could have originated from either phallic worship or any of the hero-warrior usages is untenable as a proposition, as regards the living prisoners, and is contrary to the monotheistic idea which ruled Israel, or to the benign nature of their God. The strict opposition of the religion of Judaism to any other mutilation except that of the covenant is also antagonistic to the views advanced by Bergmann, as it is well known that even emasculated animals were considered imperfect and unclean, and therefore unfit to be received or offered as a sacrifice to their deity. No emasculated man was allowed to enter the priesthood or assist at sacrifices. The whole idea of Judaism being opposed to such mutilations, their observance of circumcision and its performance can in no way have developed from either phallic or other warlike rites or usages; but we must accept its origin as a purely religious rite,—a covenant of the most rigid observance, coincident in its inception with the formation of the Hebraic creed in the hills of Chaldea.
What Herodotus or Pythagoras may have written concerning the practice among the Egyptians was written, as already remarked, some nine centuries after Moses had recorded his laws; Moses himself having come some centuries after Abraham. Herodotus is quoted as representing that the Phœnicians borrowed the practice from the Egyptians, in support of the theory that Egypt was the central nucleus from whence the practice started, and not that it traveled toward Egypt from Phœnicia. The difference in the ages, already mentioned, at which the rite was practiced—that of Phœnicia and Israel being at one time identical—shows that the testimony of Herodotus in this one particular was the result of faulty judgment, as we find the people who have borrowed the practice from the Egyptians, as well as their descendants, closely follow their practice in regard to the age at which the operation should be performed. Another evidence of the strictly religious nature of the rite, as far as the Hebrews are concerned, lies in the fact that, with all their skill in surgery and medical sciences,—they being at one time the only intelligent exponents of our science,—they never made any alteration or improvement in the manner of performing the operation. It is evident that even Maimonides, a celebrated Jewish physician of the twelfth century, who furnished some rules in regard to the operation, was held under some constraint by the religious aspect of the rite. As a summary of this part of the subject, it may be stated that the Old Testament furnished the only reliable and authentic relation prior to Pythagoras and Herodotus. From its evidence, Abraham was the first to perform the operation, which he seems to have performed on himself, his son, and servants,—in all, numbering nearly four hundred males; he then dwelt in Chaldea. In absence of other as reliable evidence we must accept this testimony in regard to its origin, causes, and antiquity.
Voltaire, in his article on circumcision in his “Philosophical Dictionary,” seems more intent on breaking down any testimony that might favor belief in any religion than to impart any useful light or information. He bases all his arguments on the book “Euterpe,” of Herodotus, wherein he relates that the Colchis appear to come from Egypt, as they remembered the ancient Egyptians and their customs more than the Egyptians remembered either the Colchis or their customs; the Colchis claimed to be an Egyptian colony settled there by Sesostris and resembled the Egyptians. Voltaire claims that, as the Jews were then in a small nook of Arabia Petrea, it is hardly likely that, they being then an insignificant people, the Egyptians would have borrowed any of their customs. To read Voltaire’s “Herodotus” is somewhat convincing, but Voltaire’s “Herodotus” and Herodotus writing himself are two different things, and the book “Euterpe” says quite another thing from what M. Voltaire makes it say. A perusal of Voltaire and a study of his Jewish critics on this subject, as found in the “Jews’ Letters to Voltaire,” will convince any reader that as to circumcision M. Voltaire is an unreliable authority.
CHAPTER III.
Spread of Circumcision.
From Chaldea, then, in the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan, the practice of circumcision was, in all probability, first adopted by the Phœnicians, who finally relinquished the Israelitish rite as to age of performance and exchanged it for the Egyptian rite. From Phœnicia its spread through the maritime enterprises of this race to foreign parts was easy. Egypt was the next place to adopt its practice; at first the priesthood and nobility, which included royalty, were the only ones who availed themselves of the practice. The Egyptians connected circumcision with hygiene and cleanliness; this was the view of Herodotus, who looked upon the rite as a strictly hygienic measure. History relates of the existence of circumcision among the Egyptians as far back as the reign of Psammétich, who ruled toward the end of the sixth century B.C. The practice must then have been of a very religious and national nature, as we are told that Psammétich, having admitted some noted strangers, whom he allowed to dwell in Egypt without being circumcised, brought himself into great disfavor among his subjects, and especially by the army, who looked upon an uncircumcised stranger as one undeserving of favors. During the next century Pythagoras visited Egypt, and was compelled to submit to be circumcised before being admitted to the privilege of studying in the Egyptian temples. In the following century these restrictions were removed, for neither Herodotus nor Diodorus, who visited the country, were obliged to be circumcised, either to dwell among the people or to follow their studies. There is one curious habit that is mentioned in connection with the rite of circumcision among these people, this being its relation to the taking of an oath or a solemn obligation. Among the Egyptians the circumcised phallus, as well as the rite of circumcision, seemed to be the symbol of the religious as well as of the political community, and the circumcised member was emblematical of civil patriotism as well as of the orthodox religion of the nation. To the Egyptian, his circumcised phallus was the symbol of national and religious honor; and as the Anglo-Saxon holds aloft his right hand, with his left resting on the holy Bible, while taking an oath, so the ancient Egyptian raised his circumcised phallus in token of sincerity,—a practice not altogether forgotten by his descendants of to-day. It was partly this custom of swearing, or of affirming, with the hand under the thigh, by the early Israelites, that caused many to believe that their circumcision was borrowed from the Egyptians, especially by M. Voltaire, who insists that it was the phallus that the hand was placed on, and that the translation has not the proper meaning, as given in the Bible.
Among the Arabs it was the practice to circumcise at the age of thirteen years, this being the age of Ishmael at his circumcision by his father, Abraham. The Arabs practiced circumcision long before the advent of Mohammed, who was himself circumcised. Pococke mentions a tradition which ascribes to the prophet the words, “Circumcision is an ordinance for men, and honorable in women.” Although the rite is not a religious imposition, it has spread wherever the crescent has carried the Mohammedan faith. Uncircumcision and impurity are to a Mohammedan synonymous terms. Like the Abyssinians, the Arabs also practice female circumcision,—an operation not without considerable medical import, as will be explained in the medical part of the work. This practice is also common in Ethopia. Some authorities argue, from this association of female circumcision among the Southern Arabs, Ethiopians, and Abyssinians, that they did not derive their rite from the Israelites; but there is not much room for doubt but that the operation came down to the Arabians from Abraham through his son Ishmael. Considering the occupancy of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt by the French, and the intercourse with these countries by the British, it is surprising that the profession in the early part of the present century had not full information regarding the nature and objects of female circumcision as practiced in these countries. Delpesh observes, in relation to the Oriental practice, that his information was too vague to determine whether it was the nymphæ or the clitoris that were removed, or whether it was only practiced in cases of abnormal elongations of these parts. M. Murat, however, writes at length on the subject, very intelligently, as well as Lonyer-Villermay, who, writing in the same work with Delpesh, thinks it is certainly the clitoris that is removed.[12] In Arabia, the trade or profession of a resectricis nympharum or she-circumciser is as stable an occupation with some matrons as that of cock-castration or caponizing is the sole occupation of many a matron in the south of Europe. It is related by Abulfeda that, in the battle of Ohod, where Mohammedanism came very near to a sudden end by the crushing defeat of the prophet and his followers, Hamza, the uncle of the prophet, seeing in the opposing ranks a Koreish chief, whom he knew, thus called out: “Come on, you son of a she-circumciser!” As Hamza was among the slain, it is most likely that he met his death from the hands of the chief, whose mother really followed that occupation. So extensive is the practice, that these old women sometimes go through a village crying out their occupation, like itinerant tinkers or scissors-grinders.
The present ceremonies attending the performance of the rite among the Arabians are well described by Dr. Delange, a surgeon of the French army, as witnessed by him in the province of Constantine, in Algeria.
With these Arabs, circumcision is performed on a whole class, so to speak, at the same time, regardless of the trifling differences in their ages. It is preceded by feasting, the total length of the feast being for eight days. For the first seven days, all the Arabs of the quarter where the candidates for circumcision reside dress in their best. The poor have their mantles and clothes carefully washed, and the rich deck themselves out in their gold and silver brocaded vests and pantaloons. During these seven days there is general rejoicing, and the Arabs spend most of this time in the village street, racing, firing guns, or engaging in sham battles between the different camps, during which one carries the green, or sacred banner, which is supposed to render the bearer invulnerable. The battle ends by the standard-bearer being fired at by all parties, and falling, but quickly rising again and waving the flag in token of its protecting power. The Arabs now adjourn to another public place, where the notables and strangers are furnished seats on carpets; here a dance to the music of tumtums and the singing of invisible females takes place, the dancers being only males.[13] In the evening the women sing, to which the men listen in silence, this concert being kept up until midnight. On the seventh day, the women, decked out in their best, and with all their personal ornaments, accompanied by all the young men, armed with their guns and pistols, repair to the extremity of the oasis, where they gather plates of fine sand. With this sand they return to the village, where it is exposed overnight to the glare of the full moon on the terraces of the house. This last day closes with a grand banquet, given by the rich whose children are about to be circumcised, to which all the people are invited.
The next morning all the relatives of the candidates repair to the house where the rite is to be performed; the women going up into the second floor, wherefrom they can look down into the court from a porch screened with lattice-work, without themselves being seen. The men gather together on the ground-floor, together with the operator and his assistants and the children about to be circumcised, who are dressed in yellow, silken gowns. The child to be operated upon is seated in a pan of sand, while an assistant fixes his arms and holds the thighs well separated from behind. The circumciser then examines the prepuce, the glans, and removes any sebaceous collection. This done, a compress with an aperture to admit of the passage of the glans is slipped over the organ; a small piece of leather, some six centimetres in diameter, with a small hole in the centre, is now used, the free end of the prepuce being drawn through the aperture; a ligature of woolen cord is then tied on to the prepuce next to the front of the leather shield, and, the knife being applied between the thread and the leather, the prepuce is removed at one sweep; the mucous inner layer is then lacerated with the thumb-nails and turned back over to join the other parts. The surface is then sprinkled with arar or genevriere powder and dressed with a small cloth bandage, the subsequent dressings consisting of arar powder and oil. During the operation the women in the gallery keep up an unearthly music by means of tumtums, cymbals, and all the kettles and saucepans of the neighborhood, which are brought into requisition for the occasion. This music is accompanied with songs and chants, each woman striking out with an independent song of her own, either improvised or suggested by the occasion. This not only serves to drown the cries of the children, but it must, in a manner, assist to draw them away from the immediate contemplation of their sufferings. The prepuces are now gathered together and carried to the end of the oasis, where they are buried with ceremony and rejoicings. This circumcision only takes place once in three or four years, and the children are from four to eight years of age; of fifteen circumcised at the feast witnessed by M. Delange, only two had passed their eighth year.
In a very interesting old book,[14] “The Treaties of Alberti Bobovii,” who was attached to the court of Mohammed IV, published with annotations by Thomas Hyde, of Oxford, in 1690, there is a description of the Turkish performance of the rite which leads one to infer that they circumcised the children quite young: “Et cum puer præ dolore exclamat, imus ex duobus parentibus digitis in melle ad hoc comparato os ei obstruit; cæteris spectatoribus acclamantibus. O Deus, O Deus, O Deus. Interim quoque Musica perstrepit, tympana et alia crepitacula concutiuntur, ne pueri planctus et ploratus audiatur.” Bobovii says that the age at which circumcision is performed is immaterial provided the candidate is old enough to make a profession of faith,—which, however, is made for him by the godfather,—in the following words: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,” or, as rendered by our author, “Non esse Deum nisi ipsum Deum, et Mohammedem esse Legatum Dei.” To which he adds that the child must not be an infant, but that he must be at least eight years of age. Like to the Arabs, the Turks celebrated the occasion by feasts, plays, and a general good time; the child was kept in bed for fifteen days to allow complete cicatrization to take place. The circumcision was performed with the boy standing.
Michel Le Feber, writing in 1681,[15] speaks of the tax levied on the Christians by the Turks, that they, the Christians, may enjoy liberty of conscience, and observes that, circumcision not being compulsory among the Turks, it often led to trouble and annoyances, as many of the Turks evaded the operation. The tax-gatherers in Turkey are very industrious, and, as being circumcised was, as a rule, sufficient evidence of not being a Christian, he often witnessed on the streets scenes wherein strangers, arrested by these tax-collectors, were compelled to show their circumcision as an indisputable sign of their exemption from the tax. He also relates that in their zeal for converts to Mohammedanism the Turks often resorted to presents to induce Christians to embrace their faith. While in Aleppo, he saw a Portugese sailor, who, through presents, had forsaken his religion, but who had repented in the most emphatic manner when brought to face circumcision. Finding entreaties in vain, the Cadi ordered the immediate administration of a stupefying draught, and the sailor was then seized and circumcised without further ceremony.
In cases where the new Mohammedan is reasonable and submits like a hero, the ceremonies are more elaborate. Le Feber relates that if the candidate is a man of note or wealth he is mounted on a horse and exhibited all over the city; he is dressed in the richest of Turkish robes and in his hand he holds an arrow with the point directed to the sky; he is followed by a great concourse of people, some dressed in holiday attire and others in fantastic costumes; and general feasting and enjoyment is the rule over the course of the march, where all the people run to swell the crowd. If the man happens to be a poor man, he is simply hurriedly marched about on foot, with a simple arrow in his hand pointed skyward, to distinguish him from ordinary mortals; before him a crier proclaims in a loud voice that the new religionist has ennobled himself by professing the faith of the prophet in this solemn manner. A collection for his benefit is taken up among the booths and shops, which is mostly appropriated by the conductor, circumciser, and his assistants, after which he is circumcised without further ado.
The same author describes the operation as performed on the young Turks and the accompanying ceremonies. They differ in some respects from those employed in circumcising a convert. The parents of the child give a feast in proportion to their means, to which are invited the relatives of the family and personal friends; if of the upper ranks, he is promenaded about the town to the music of drums and cymbals, dressed in rich attire; two warriors lead the procession with drawn swords, and a troop of females who sing songs of joy bring up the rear; the procession now and then stops, when the two gladiators in the front indulge in a fierce set-to, hacking at each other in the most determined and murderous manner, but so studiedly shammy that neither is injured; on the return to the house, the child, who is usually eight or ten years of age, is bound hand and foot to prevent his causing any injury to himself, laid on a bed, and circumcised with a razor, the operation being performed either by a surgeon or the chief of a mosque.
CHAPTER IV.
Circumcision Among Savage Tribes.
E. Casalis,[16] who, in the capacity of missionary, for a very long time resided among the Bassoutos, tells us that among that nation the operation is performed at the age of from thirteen to fifteen years. The ceremony is gone through once in three or four years. So important an event is it considered by the Bassoutos that they date events from one of these observances, as the Romans dated events from a certain consulship, or the Greeks from an Olympiade. At the time fixed, all the candidates go through a sham rebellion and escape to the woods; the warriors arm and give chase, and, after a sham battle, capture the insurgents, whom they bring back as prisoners, amidst dancing and great rejoicings, which are the preludes to the feast. The next day the huts of mystery (mapato) are erected, where, after the circumcision, the young men are to reside for some eight months, under the tutorship of experienced teachers, who drill them in the use of the spear, sword, and shield, teaching them to endure hunger, thirst, blows, and all manner of hardships; prolonged fasts and cruel flagellations being regarded as pastimes between the exercises. The severity of the regulations may be judged from the fact that the instructors have a right to put to death any one who may try to escape from these ordeals. The women are rigorously excluded from these camps, but the men are allowed to visit them, when they have the privilege of assisting the teachers by adding additional blows and precepts to the backs of the unlucky candidates. After eight months of such training, the young men are oiled from head to foot and dressed in a garment, and are now given the name which they are to bear for the rest of their lives. The mapato, or mystery hut, is now burned to the ground and the young men return to the village. The maternal uncle of the youth here presents him with a javelin for his defense, and a cow that is to furnish him with nourishment. Until the time of his marriage, the newly circumcised dwell together; their duties being of a menial character, such as gathering wood and attending to the flocks and droves.
M. Paul Lafargue looks upon circumcision among the negro races as being a rite commemorating their advent to manhood; Livingstone, who has also observed the above, related incidents in relation to the performance of boguera, or circumcision, among the Bassoutos, believes that with them the rite has a purely civil significance, being in no way connected with religion.
Among many of the African tribes the young maids have an ordeal approaching to circumcision that they must pass when near the age of thirteen, this rite bearing precisely the same relation regarding their entrance into the state of womanhood that male circumcision denotes the entrance into manhood on the part of the males among the Bassoutos. At the appointed time the maids are gathered together and conducted to the riverbank; they are placed under the care of expert matrons. They here reside, after having undergone a kind of baptism; they are maltreated, punished, and abused by the old women, with a view of making them hardy and insensible to pain; they are also schooled in the science and art of African household duties. Among the Gallinas of Sierra Leone, in addition to the other observances, the clitoris of the young maid is excised at midnight, while the moon is at its full, after which they receive their name by which they are to be known through life. The initiation of each sex into these mysteries is exclusively for the sex engaged, and it would be as fatal for a man to steal into the camp of the women during the performance of these ceremonies as it would be fatal for a woman to enter a mapato where the young men are undergoing their ordeal. After their initiation into womanhood, the maids live by themselves, similarly to the young men, until they marry.
Lafargue relates that among the Australians circumcision is held in such importance that tribes at war will suspend all hostilities and meet in peace during the observance or performance of the rite. Here, again, we have a repetition, with a slight variation, of the practices of the Bassoutos,—something which gives some countenance to the hero-warrior idea of the origin of circumcision advanced by Bergmann. The Australian warriors go through a mimic battle, and, after a series of combats, finally capture the boys aged about from thirteen to fourteen years, whom they bear away amidst the cries and lamentations of the mothers and other female relatives, who, in their excess of grief, mutilate themselves by cutting gashes into their thighs, so that they bleed profusely. The boys are, in the meantime, carried to some out-of-the-way place, where an old man, perched on a tree or some rising ground, through the means of a musical instrument made of a deal-board and human hair, announced that the rite is in process of performance, so that neither women nor children might approach. Tufts of moss are placed in the axilla and on the pubis, to represent puberty, and among some tribes the skin of the penis is divided to the scrotum with a stone knife, while others content themselves with simply making a circular incision, which removes the prepuce, after the Jewish manner, the excised portion being placed as a ring on the median finger of the left hand. The circumcised then takes himself to the hills or woods, and there remains until healed, carefully guarding himself against the approach of any female. After this the third part of the ceremonies takes place: the godfather of the youth opens a vein in his own arm, the circumcised youth is placed on all-fours, and an incision is made from the neck down as far as the lumbar region, and the blood of the godfather is made to flow and mingle with that of the godchild; this being in reality a bloody baptism, and a near relation to the blood-compacts of the Arabs.
The Malays, as well as the men of Borneo, are circumcised. The Battos likewise perform the rite. Among the Islanders they sometimes ligate the prepuce so that it drops off. Among the Battos the same object is reached by small bamboo sticks, between which the prepuce is fastened. In New Caledonia and Tidshi the boys are circumcised in their seventh year. The Tonga Islanders split the prepuce on the dorsum with a piece of bamboo or of shell. In the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands the operation is superintended by the priests.[17]
CHAPTER V.
Infibulation, Muzzling, and other Curious Practices.
It seems a matter of controversy as to whether the Mexicans did or did not circumcise their children. That they had a blood-covenant is admitted by the historians, as well as the fact that this blood was taken from the prepuce; but that the prepuce was actually removed is something that is not agreed upon by all authorities. Las Casas and Mendieta state that it was practiced by the Aztecs and Totonacs, while Brasseur de Bourbourg found traces of its practice among the Mijes. Las Casas states that on the twenty-eighth or the twenty-ninth day the child was presented to the temple, when the high-priest and his assistants placed it upon a stone and cut off the prepuce, the excised part being afterward burnt in the ashes. Girls of the same age were deflowered by the finger of the high-priest, who ordered the operation to be repeated at the sixth year; and once a year, at the fifth month, all the children born during the year were scarified on the breast, stomach, or arms, to denote their reception as servants of their god. Clavigero, on the other hand, denies that circumcision was ever practiced. It was customary in Mexico, according to most authorities, to take the children while infants to the temple, where the priests made an incision in the ear of the females, and an incision in the ear and prepuce of the males.[18]
Grotins and Arias Montan at one time advanced the idea that the western coast of South America was peopled by some mutinous sailors from the fleets of King Solomon, who, in their endeavor to go away far enough to be out of reach, were driven by winds and chance to the Peruvian coast. Others have imagined that some of the lost tribes of Israel found their way eastward to America, by the way of China, to the Mexican coast. The same ideal tradition has made the lost tribes the fathers of the Iroquois Nation in the northeastern parts of the United States. An author, who will be quoted in another part of this work, scouts the idea that the rite, as performed in America, had any connection or common origin with the rite performed in Asia and Africa; but, true to his theory of the climatic causes of the origin of circumcision, he maintains that it originated here as it did elsewhere, being a performance born of climatic necessity. He is, however, dissatisfied with Father Acosta for not being more explicit in relation to the modus operandi of the Mexican circumcision. The want of being explicit, and its consequences in this particular regard, may be inferred from a “Diatribe on Circumcision,” by a Mr. Mallet, in an encyclopædic dictionary of the last century, in which Mr. Mallet informs his readers that Mexicans were in the habit of cutting off the ears and prepuces of the newly born. Herrera and Acosta agree with Clavigero in asserting that the Mexicans simply bled the prepuce. Pierre d’Angleria and other contemporary writers are as emphatic in asserting that in the island of Cosumel, in Yucatan, on the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico and on the Florida coast, they have observed circumcision by the complete removal of the prepuce with a stone knife. The Spanish monk, Gumilla, relates that the Saliva Indians of the Orinoco circumcised their infants on the eighth day. These Indians also included the females in the observance of the rite. The same author tells us of the barbarous and bloody performances, in relation to the rite, of the nations on the banks of the Quilato and the Uru, as well as those dwelling along the streams that empty into the Apure. The same is said of the Guamo and of the Othomacos Indians; according to Gumilla, many of these Indians, in addition to the rite of circumcision, inflicted a number of cuts on the arms, legs, and over the body, to a degree that amounted to butchery, the child being reserved for this inhuman treatment until the age of ten or twelve years, that he might, by his greater powers of resistance and of recuperation, stand some chance of escaping alive from the ordeal. The friar mentions that in 1721 he found a child dying from this treatment, the wounds having become gangrenous and the child dying of pyæmia; prior to the operation the children were stupefied with some narcotic drink, and were insensible during its performance.[19]
Besides circumcision, the Americans practiced several other operations that bore an analogy to the operation of infibulation, a procedure common to the Orient and to early Europe, and so ancient that, like circumcision, its source is in the misty clouds of antiquity. It consisted in introducing a large ring, either of gold, silver, or iron, through an opening made into the prepuce, the free ends being then welded together. Females were treated likewise, the ring including both labia. In some countries an agglutination of the parts induced by some irritant or a cutting instrument answered the purpose among females. Dunglison mentions that the prepuce was first drawn over the glans, and then that the ring transfixed the prepuce in that position; that the ancients so muzzled the gladiators to prevent them from being enervated by venereal indulgence. The ancient Germans lived a life of chastity until their marriage, and to their observance of a chaste life can be attributed the superior physical development of the race, as both males and females were not only fully developed, but were not enervated by either sexual excess or inclinations before having offspring, which were necessarily robust and healthy. To obtain the same results in a nation given to indolence and luxury, and lax in its morality, some physical restraint was required, and we therefore find the practice of infibulation coming from the warm countries to the East. The ancients not only infibulated their gladiators to restrain them from venery, but they also subjected their chanters and singers to the same ordeal, as it was found to improve the voice; comedians and public dancers were also restrained from ruining their talents by the means of infibulation. In an old Amsterdam edition of Locke’s “Essay on the Extent of the Human Understanding,” there is a quotation from the voyages of Baumgarten, wherein he states having seen in Egypt a devout dervish seated in a perfect state of nature among the sand-hillocks, who was regarded as a most holy and chaste man for the reason that he did not associate with his own kind, but only with the animals. As this was by no means an uncommon case, it led the Greek monks, in Greece and Asia Minor, to resort to every expedient to protect their chastity; in some of the monasteries not only were the monks muzzled by the process of infibulation, but they even had rules that excluded all females, either human or animal, from within their convent,—a habit that still prevails among many of the convents of the Orient to this day,—that on Mount Athos especially, omitting the infibulation of the ancients.
Readers living in the climates of extreme ranges and of seasonal change cannot understand the physical temptations that beset mortals in certain climates, any more than they can imagine the faultless condition of the climate itself. The subject of climatic influences will be more fully discussed further on; but climate, as a factor of habits and usages in one part of the world, that are incomprehensible to those living in others, plays a part that is but little appreciated or understood; whether it be the question of diet, dress, or custom, climate exerts its influence in no uncertain manner. As Sulpicius Severus remarked to the Greek monks, when they accused the Gaulish monks with voracity and gluttony, “That which you of Greece consider as superfluous, the climate of Gaul renders into a positive necessity.” So of all physical needs and passions,—they are subject to a similar law. Those who have read Canon Kingsley’s small work on the “Hermits of Asia, Africa, and Europe” will appreciate the above remarks; and it may be incidentally mentioned that his description of the climate that is common to the hilly country bordering on the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea gives as vivid and as graphic a description of the physical condition of the climate and of its effects as can well be written. It occurs in the life of the hermit Hilarion, and the description given relates to his last home in the ruins of an old temple, situated on a cliff in the island of Cyprus, where the air is so invigorating that “man needs there hardly to eat, drink, or sleep, for the act of breathing will give life enough.” The work gives the best insight also into origin and causes that led to monachism, as well as it tells the benefit that the condition conferred on humanity, showing a phase in the march of civilization that is but little understood.
But, to return to the subject of infibulation, which has, in a manner, necessitated this digression from the main topic. Thwing[20] informs us that in ancient Germany woman was considered the moral equal of man, and that woman might traverse the vast stretches of country unprotected and unharmed. Woman never held such a position in the Oriental countries; neither has man, under the sub-tropics, a like self-command as shown by those ancient Gauls. So that, with the advent of Christianity and the moral revolution that followed, primitive methods, either inflicted on others or self-inflicted, were adopted to insure a chaste life. Infibulation was known, as already stated, for centuries, and in those rude times it seemed as the most natural and effective mode of accomplishing the object. It was not as barbarous an operation as emasculation on the male, as it only temporarily interfered with his functions.
In the Old World the practice is still performed in various manners. In Ethiopia, when a female child is born the vulva is stitched together, allowing only the necessary passage for the needs of nature. These parts adhere together, and the father is then possessed of a virgin which he can sell to the highest bidder, the union being severed with a sharp knife just before marriage. In some parts of Africa and Asia, a ring, as before stated, transfixed the labia, which, to be removed, required either a file or a chisel; this is worn only by virgins. Married women wear a sort of muzzle fastened around the body, locked by means of a key or a padlock, the key being only in the possession of the husband. The wealthy have their seraglios and eunuchs, that take the place of the belt and lock. Another method is a mailed belt worn about the hips, made of brass wire, with a secret combination of fastenings, known only to the husband. In the museum in Naples are to be seen some of these belts, studded with sharp-pointed pikes over the abdominal part of the instrument, which was calculated to prevent even innocent familiarity, such as nest-hiding, to say nothing of greater evils.
In the “Les Femmes, Les Eunuchs, et Les Guerrieres du Soudan,” Col. Du Bisson mentions a very peculiar custom invented by the careful jealousy that is inseparable from harem life. He had noticed that many of the harem inmates, contrary to the general Oriental custom, were allowed to go about unattended by the usual guard of eunuchs, but that they walked in a painful, hesitating, and impeded manner. This walk was not the conventional, short, shuffling step that peculiarity of dress and shoe-wear imposes on the Japanese beauty, nor the willowy, swaying gait produced in the Chinese beauty by the lack of a sufficiency of foot; neither could it be ascribed to the presence of the ancient jingling chain of bells which induced the mincing steps of the virgins of Judea,—an invention which confined the lower limbs within certain limits by being worn just below the knees, and calculated to prevent the rupture of the hymen by any undue length of step or violent exercise; hence a tinkling noise and a mincing step always denoted a virgin. In Du Bisson’s cases, however, virgins were out of the question; they might be the victims of enforced continence, but a Soudanese harem contains no virgins. On inquiry he learned that the very peculiar and unmistakably painful gait was due to the fact that each woman carried a bamboo stick, about eight inches in length, three inches or more being inserted in the vagina so as to effectually fill the opening, the balance projecting beyond, between the thighs of the person; this bamboo stick, or guardian of female virtue, was held in place by a strap with a shield that covered the vulva, the whole apparatus being strapped about the hips and waist, and the whole being held in an undisplaceable position by a padlock. This was affixed to the woman whenever she was allowed outside the harem grounds, being placed in position by the eunuch, who carried the key at his girdle. In such a harness virtue can be considered perfectly safe; even safe from any mental depredation or revolution, as, with the plug causing such uncomfortable sensations, it is perfectly safe to infer that the imagination could not be seduced by any Don Juanic or other Byronic unvirtuous revelry. The physical ills that this contrivance must cause are necessarily without number, as the instrument is not as lightly constructed as our modern stem pessaries; but to the Oriental who can replace a woman at any time and who prizes the virginity, continence, and chastity of his slaves, even if enforced, more than their health or their lives, these are matters of secondary importance. In the Soudan there are no divorce courts, hence the probable necessity of the apparatus, and, as the woman is not obliged to wear it unless she chooses to go out unattended, it can hardly be considered as a compulsory barbarity. In the United States such a practice might do away with considerable divorce proceedings.
Celsus gives a detailed description of the manner of infibulating as practiced among the Romans. According to this authority, it was employed by them on the youth attending the public schools, as well as upon the actors, dancers, and choristers, who were sold to the directors of the plays and spectacles. In the cabinet of the Roman College there are to be seen two small statues representing two infibulated musicians, which are remarkable for the excessive size of the ring and the leanness of the persons to which they are attached. The mode of applying this ring did not differ much from the usual method of preparing the ear for pendants.[21]
Among the Greek monks mentioned, the infibulation serves a manifold purpose; it not only is a sure badge of chastity, but its weight and size is very often increased so as to render it an instrument of penitence, and considerable rivalry exists at times in this regard. Virey notices that the Hindoo bonze, or fakir, at times submits to infibulation at the same time that he takes his vows of eternal chastity. This ring is at times enormous, being sometimes six inches in diameter; so that it is a burden. These saints are held in great esteem and veneration.
Nelaton, in the sixth volume of his “Surgery,” mentions the case of a man who presented himself at Dupuytren’s clinic with a tumefied, thickened, and somewhat dilapidated and ulcerated prepuce; this prepuce had worn a couple of golden padlocks for five years, a woman having thus infibulated his organ.
In an elaborate work on the subject of circumcision,[22] de Vanier du Havre relates, on the authority of M. Martin Flaccourt, that with the Madécasses the children are circumcised on the eighth day after birth; and that in some portions of the country the mother swallows the removed portion of the prepuce, while in others the father loads the prepuce in some form of fire-arm, which is afterward fired in the air. In the neighborhood of Djezan, in Arabia, as reported by M. Fulgence Fresnel in the Revue de Deux Mondes of 1838, courtship and matrimony are not so great social events as they are with our society beaux. The occasion is probably considered social enough by the rest of the invited guests, but it can hardly be called an agreeable episode in the life of the groom. Those whose bashfulness prevents them from contracting marriage in civilized communities can have the consolation of knowing that in far-off Arabia, among the fierce followers of the conquerors of Spain and of the Eastern Empire, they have sympathizing fellow-sufferers whom the conventionalities of the country deter from rushing into matrimony. In this region, circumcision is performed on the adult at the time of his candidacy for matrimonial bliss. A more inauspicious occasion could not possibly have been chosen, unless as in another Mohammedan tribe, who circumcise the bridegroom on the day after his marriage and sprinkle the blood that falls from the cut onto the veil of the bride. The bride is present, and the victim is handed over to what might be called the executioner of the holy office, who proceeds to circumcise the victim in what might be called its utmost degree of performance and barbarity. This attention does not stop at the pendulous and loose prepuce. He devotes himself to the skin of the whole organ; beginning at the prepuce he gradually works backward, removing the whole skin of the penis—a flaying alive, and nothing more. Should the victim betray any sign of weakness, or allow as much as a sigh or groan to escape him, or even allow the muscles of the face to betray the fact that he is not immensely enjoying the occasion, the bride elect at once leaves him for good, saying that she does not wish a woman for a husband. A large proportion of the male population annually die from this operation. So that the Arabs of the Djezin can be likened to those spiders who lose their life while in the act of copulation,—the female making a dinner from off the male,—only the spider is said to die a happy death, while that of the Arab is one of misery.
Margrave and Martyr have recorded a very peculiar practice common among some South American tribes: A kind of a tube is fastened onto the prepuce by means of threads of the tacoynhaa, the latter being the bark of a certain kind of a tree. Cabras brought one of the natives, so muzzled, to Lisbon, on the return from his first voyage. Some tribes were observed to wear an apparatus like the old-fashioned candle-extinguisher, the virile member having been forced into this receptacle, which was strapped about the loins.
The travelers Spix and Martius found the practice of circumcision of both sexes in the region of the upper Amazon River and among the Tuncas. Squires mentions a curious custom of the aborigines of Nicaragua. They wound the penis of their little sons and let some of the blood flow on an ear of corn, which is divided among the assembled guests and eaten by them with great ceremony.
On the fifth day after birth it is the custom among the Omaha Indians of North America to christen the infant, the child being stripped and spotted with a red pigment; considerable ceremony accompanies the act.[23]
Among the cannibals of Australia, Lumholtz[24] observed a practice that seems to have no analogue in the wide world, either as an operation or in regard to its purposes. About ninety-five per cent. of the children are subjected to the ordeal. This is no less than the formation of an artificial hypospadias; this abnormality is formed through the penis into the urethra, near its junction with the scrotum; the wound is about an inch in length and is made with a flint knife which serves for no other purpose; the edges of the wound are burned with a hot stone, and the wound is subsequently kept open by the introduction of a small piece of wood, which, on healing, leaves a permanent opening. These cannibals undoubtedly are inspired by some Malthusian spirit which impels them thus to functionally eunuchize themselves in one sense, as during copulation the seminal discharge flies out backward through this opening, being thereby a most effectual check on further procreation. By some, this practice has been attributed to the unreliability of the seasons in regard to food-production; but Lumholtz observes that where the practice is most in vogue—among the tribes to the west of the Diamantina River and west and north of the Gulf of Carpentaria—the food-supply is not deficient, the region being full of rats, fish, and vegetables. All the tribes are not subject to the practice of the operation at the same time of life; in some, the hypospadias is not produced until in adult life and after the person has married and has become the father of one or two children, when he must submit to the requirements of the law; the operation seems to be invested with some civil or religious significance, as a palisade or stockade of trees is placed around the place where it is performed. A native, aged about twenty years, informed Lumholtz that the operation was performed because the blacks did not like to hear the children cry about the camp, and, further, that they were not desirous of having many children; this native had not yet become a father and had not yet been subjected to the operation. The natives were observed to be fat and in good physical condition.
There is something mysterious in this operation. It can easily be conceived how circumcision might at times have been suggested by its spontaneous and natural performance without any assistance from man. Cullerier reports one case of partial circumcision through the means of an accident happening to a painter. The man was at work on a ladder, with a small bucket of paint hooked into one of the rounds above him; through some means the bucket lost its hold and in falling struck the penis on its dorsum with such force that the prepuce was cut through on a parallel with the corona of the glans for fully two-thirds of its circumference, the glans slipping through the opening and gathering in a fleshy bunch underneath the frenum. This man carried this abnormality for some years, when, desiring to marry and seeing that this appendage would be as much of an impediment as one of the huge rings worn by the Hindoo devotee, he applied to Cullevier for advice, who promptly removed it with the knife.[25] The writer has seen three cases, during his practice, of spontaneous circumcision, all resulting from phymosis as a secondary affection to venereal disease. The first case occurred when he first entered into practice; it was in a young, stout, and full-blooded man with a violent gonorrhœa. There was much swelling and tumefaction of the whole organ, which seemed to be very rebellious to all treatment. At one of his morning visits he was horrified to observe a transverse, livid mark at what seemed to be the middle of the organ; by noon this had gained ground to the right and left and there was no mistaking that it meant nothing less than mortification. Never having seen a case, the natural uncomfortable conclusion was that, through some cause or other or the natural result of excessive congestion, the man was about to lose one-half of his organ; and Burnside at Fredericksburg was in no greater state of suspense and uncertainty with the fate of the Army of the Potomac on his hands than the writer must acknowledge he was with this man and his organ apparently liquefying under his treatment. The surprise can be better imagined than described when, on the following morning, the glans made its appearance safe and sound out of its imprisonment, and at right angles with the organ there hung the prepuce, thick and as large and as long as the penis itself, inflammatory deposit and infiltration having brought it to that shape and consistence; the glans became completely uncovered; the parts gathered underneath, where, in the course of some weeks, they had shrunk to the size of a walnut, which was afterward removed by the knife. In this case, as in the other two cases observed, the corona was very prominent and acted as an internal tourniquet by its upward pressure, the line of demarkation being on the dorsum in the three cases noted.
That such cases would suggest circumcision is not only probable but possible, as it would point out the manner of performing the operation; but, in the cases of the Australian savages, who performed an artificial hypospadias on themselves for a specific purpose, requiring a knowledge of the anatomical relation of the parts as well as of their physiological functions, it is hard to speculate how the operation was first suggested or how it came at first to be performed. As a Malthusian agent it is certainly an operation of the highest merit, and it should be introduced, by all means, in the United States, where the wealth and luxury in which the people dwell is fast drifting them toward the same whirlpool that engulfed Rome, which was preceded by a dislike to have children. Whenever the writer sees the poor anæmic, broken-down victim of many miscarriages, he cannot help but feel that, if the laws of the Damiantina River savages were enforced on their husbands, it would be a blessing to the poor women without materially injuring the husbands, who, in case of need of a re-establishment of the functions of procreation, might be fitted with a vulcanite plate for the occasion,—something like our cleft-palate patients are supplied with a plate that enables them to articulate.
It was the custom among the Hottentots, when first discovered or known to the whites, to remove one of their testicles. This was supposed to enable them to run more swiftly and to be lighter-footed in the race. The real reason, afterward found, was a mixture of pure humanitarianism and Malthusianism boiled down to Hottentot ethics. With them a monorchid was not supposed to beget twins; when twins are born in the family, the mother generally smothers the female, if one happens to be such; if not, then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy, generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary civilized white man would not do, even if his legitimate wife and all his outside concubines were to have twins or triplets every nine months; so that, even as strange as it may appear, civilization must need go to the wild Bushmen in search of that grand old Quixotic chivalry that was in ancient times always ready to sacrifice itself for the welfare of woman.
The old Greek and Roman statues, representing the gods and athletes of ancient Greece and Rome, are a puzzle to many, owing to the diminutive and phimosed virile organ that the artists have attached to them. Galen represents that the disuse of the organ by the athletes was the cause of its undeveloped form, and that as the organ of these did not figure in the worship of Venus, or participate in the festivals of Bacchus, but was used solely and simply for micturating purposes, impotence was often the result, citing the case of a patient who came to consult him for an obstinate priapism resulting from venereal excess, who met, in his anteroom, an athlete who was being treated for the opposite condition, due to the too rigid continence to which he had been for years subjected. Acton does not believe that continued continence has that effect, quoting Dr. Bergeret, who had long been physician to a number of religious societies, as saying that he had never seen serious troubles of the organs of generation in these communities, which denotes that if they indulged in proper fasting and prayer they were in the same condition of flaccid impotence as the athlete in Galen’s anteroom. Louis VII, of France, tried fasting and prayer in connection with rigid continence, and, as a result, his wife, Queen Eleonore, was divorced from him and married Henry II, of England, who had not been continent. Hence, we see that the old sculptors, whether wishing to represent Jupiter or Plato, Æsculapius or Mars, a strongly knit and muscular frame was desired, an athlete, gladiator, or soldier being used as a model; the small, puerile, funnel-prepuced organ belonged to all these muscular or well-trained classes, was a natural appendage, as enforced continence and the most absolute chastity was the rule, to enforce which they even resorted to infibulation. This enforced continence often resulted in impotence, even before the prime of life was passed, accompanied by an inevitable atrophy of the male organ, with the resulting prepuce in the shape in which it is found in a boy of from eight to twelve years, precisely as they are found on the statues. How faithful the sculptors and artists were to nature and life in their representations can well be imagined by a critical examination of the Apollo Belvidere, where the difference of the scrotal position that exists between the right and left testicles is carried out to the minutest anatomical detail. In our age it is hard to conceive why their most masculine men should be deified, and all their gods represented as the most perfect of bodily development, while at the same time the finest physical specimens of manhood were doomed to a life of the most rigorous continence. It is also astonishing that all this should be done not from any principle or consideration of morality or virtue, but simply as a means subservient in producing at its maximum the highest degree of physical development and endurance.
CHAPTER VI.
Attempts to Abolish Circumcision.
Probably no rite or practice of a custom has been such a long-standing bone of contention as circumcision; nor does the Sphynx surpass this relic of bygone ages in mystery. From time immemorial its practice has been the subject of disputes, and its literature finds oftentimes its friends and foes ranged side by side. At one time a noted Israelite and Voltaire, the scoffer of Judaism, may be consulted on the question as to whether Israelite or Egyptian is entitled to priority as to its original practice with a like answer; and, again, Christians are found who, after a careful investigation, will accord this to the Israelites. In Rome, the persecuted Hebrew was stopped on the street and compelled to show the mark of circumcision, that he might be taxed, and in Turkish parts the Christian was subjected to the same indignity to enable the tax-gatherer to harvest the impost which he paid for his liberty of conscience and not being circumcised. When the monkish missionaries of the Catholic faith first entered Abyssinia, they were shocked to find their converts insisting on their time-honored practice of circumcision; and later, when the Propaganda sent its own missionaries, they were scandalized to see Christians practicing what they looked upon as an infidel rite; and nothing but the most earnest confession of faith, with the assurance that the rite of circumcision was only a physical remedy, and that in their conscience it in no wise possessed any religious significance, and that neither did they, in any sense, hold it in any connection with the sacrament of baptism, permitted these Abyssinians to save themselves from excommunication. Later still, when an Abyssinian bishop was present in Lisbon, the clergy of the city refused him the right of celebrating the sacrifice of the holy mass in the Cathedral of Lisbon, on the ground that he, having been circumcised, was no better than a heretic. The Abyssinian Christians still practice the rite at the present day.
The Turks, although very fanatical and greater proselyters than the Christians of Rome, seem now and then to relax in favor of general utility, as we find Bajazet II writing to the Pope, Alexander VI, supplicating his Holiness to confer a cardinal’s hat on the Archbishop of Arles as a special favor to the Turkish emperor, as he knew that the archbishop had a secret leaning toward Mohammedanism. As the clergy of those days, from the Holy Father down, were more politicians than followers of the humble Nazarene, the heaven of Mohammed had probably more attractions for their taste than the ideal Christian paradise, and it is possible that the good archbishop would have submitted to a cardinal’s hat and circumcision at the same time to secure the good things of this world and of those in the world to come. History also relates that his most Christian majesty, Henry III, of France, as a relaxation to the interminable squabble between two Christian religious factions which were rending France, and which in the end cost him his life, actually wrote a letter to the Sultan, asking the favor to be allowed to stand as godfather at the circumcision of his son. When it is remembered that the godfather at a Turkish circumcision has to make a strong profession of Moslem faith and the answers as sponsor for the child, and must promise that the child will be faithful to the Koran and Mohammed, it will be seen that, however much the lower levels of humanity may quarrel over trifles, the heads of the people easily accommodated themselves to any existing circumstances. Friar Clemens might as well have let such a liberal-minded monarch live, as any of the existing churches could easily have got along with him.
On the other hand, we have the remarkable tenacity to custom and habit in this regard, as exhibited by the Moslems, who, although having neither ordinance nor authority for its performance, either in their law, creed, or in any order from their prophet, still no more zealous circumciser exists than the son of Islam, who exacts from all proselytes the excision of the prepuce. Mohammed was circumcised in his boyhood, and, although he did not order its performance to his followers, he did not see fit to proscribe a custom so general to the Arabians, where the greater development of the prepuce probably renders circumcision a necessity. From the same reason it is easy to perceive why the rite has found such general observance among the Africans, who are as noted for long and leathery prepuces as for their slim shanks. One author, writing in 1772, in a work entitled “Philosophical Researches on the Americans,” treats the subject in a very intelligent manner. His arguments are both ingenious and plausible. This author looks upon circumcision as of purely climatic origin in its inceptive causes. From a careful survey of the natural history of man in his general distribution over the globe, he finds that circumcision may be said to be restricted to within certain boundaries of latitude, equidistant on both sides of the line. No circumcised people have ever inhabited northern regions, and the bulk of the circumcised races are found within certain climates. From this reasoning it is easy to see why the rite should lose its standing under certain climatic conditions, unless bolstered up by some religious significance, as it is equally easy to foresee why it should flourish elsewhere, even without any religious backing or ordinance. It is well known that in Ethiopia and the neighboring countries, excrescences and elongation of either the prepuce or nymphæ are as probable as the existence of an enlarged thyroid gland or goitre among the inhabitants of some of the valleys of Switzerland or of those of the Tyrol. According to the author of the treatise just quoted, circumcision would be nothing more than a remedy to repair the evils that a faulty construction of the human body developed in certain climatic conditions.
With the Israelites it is observed as a religious rite, although they are not strangers to the physical benefits that circumcision confers upon them; the fact that even where no prepuce exists, as sometimes happens, the circumciser nevertheless goes on with the rite, being satisfied with drawing a few drops of blood from the skin near the glans, stamps the operation essentially as being a religious rite. Persecutions have signally failed to suppress its performance by those of the Hebrew faith. Beginning with the decree of Antiochus, 167 B.C., which consigned every Hebrew mother to death who dared to circumcise her offspring, they have not ceased to suffer in defense of their rite. Adrian, among other repressive measures, forbade circumcision; under Antonine this edict was still enforced, but he afterward recalled it and gave to the Hebrews the right of observing their religious rites. Marcus Aurelius, however, revived the edict of Adrian. Heliogabalus, who ascended the Roman throne in the year 218 A.D., was himself circumcised. During the reign of Constantine all the laws that interfered with Hebraic rites were renewed, with the addition that any Hebrew who should circumcise a slave should suffer death. Under the sway of Justinian, in the sixth century, the persecutions against these people were so oppressive that a Hebrew was not allowed to raise or educate his own child in the faith of his fathers. In the seventh century, the augurs having prophesied the ruin of the Roman Empire by a circumcised race to the emperor Heraclius, the persecutions were renewed against these unfortunate people. In this century, Hebrews refusing baptism suffered banishment and confiscation of all their property; they were obliged to renounce the Sabbath, circumcision, and all Hebraic rites if they wished to remain. About this period the success of the Saracens induced persecutions of the Hebrews in Spain, where their children were taken away from them that they might be raised in the Christian religion. In the fifteenth century they suffered the greatest persecution and martyrdom at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The persecutions above cited were national and governmental persecutions levelled directly at the Jewish nation and creed; the persecutions that they momentarily suffered at other times had no signification beyond the exhibition of popular spite and fury, but those above cited were moves calculated to extirpate the creed, if not the people, from off the face of the globe. If repressive measures are of any avail, circumcision as an Hebraic rite should now have no existence. Its present existence and observance show a vitality that is simply phenomenal; its resistance and apparent indestructibility would seem to stamp it as of divine origin. No custom, habit, or rite has survived so many ages and so many persecutions; other customs have died a natural death with time or want of persecution, but circumcision, either in peace or in war, has held its own, from the misty epochs of the stone age to the present.
There is something pathetic and soul-appealing in contemplating the early Christians forced to worship in the catacombs of Rome, hunted like wild animals in their subterranean burrows, and then given the choice of making offerings to the heathen gods or being thrown into the arena as prey to wild beasts; so are we stirred when we think of the Spanish Jew, who had made Spain his home for centuries, being driven into exile in such droves that no country could receive them; we see them perishing of hunger by the thousands on the African coast, and dying of starvation on the quays of the ports of civilized Italy. That many, through all these trials, were forced to embrace other religions is not astonishing. In Spain apostacy was to no purpose, as the Inquisition could not be expected to split hairs in regard to an apostate Jew, when it sent the best of Gothic blood, raised in the Catholic faith, to the auto da fé or the scaffold,—the rack respecting neither faith nor profession that fell into its clutches. In milder persecutions, however, he escaped by outwardly conforming to the demands of his oppressors and history tells us of the circumcisions secretly performed on the dead Jew, that the spirit of the law of their fathers might be carried out.
In other cases, threatened exile, confiscation, or exorbitant taxation drove them to adopt every possible expedient to eradicate the sign of their Israelitism and make attempts to reform a prepuce. The first attempts in this line were made during the reign of Antiochus, when a number of Hebrews wished to become as the people about them who were not persecuted—fecerunt cibi præputia. This is no easy operation, and in later times by the aid of appliances, both in Rome and in Spain, they undertook to cause the skin to recover the glans. Martial, in speaking of the instrument used in Rome, a sort of a long funnel-shaped copper tube in which the Hebrew carried his virile organ, terms it Judæm Pondum, the weight of which, by drawing down the skin, was supposed in time to draw it down far enough to answer the purpose. The apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, refers to these practices when he says, “Was any one called being circumcised, let him not be uncircumcised.” The operation of reforming a prepuce, or of obliterating the marks of circumcision, does not appear to have been a success.
The writer had one experience that was interesting. On one occasion he advised circumcision for the relief of a reflex nervous disease, in a tall, athletic Austrian sailor from the Adriatic; although the nature of the operation was explained to the man, he evidently did not appreciate its full nature and importance until a sweeping cut with a scalpel left the excised prepuce in the operator’s hand. Most Adriatic sailors have sailed up the Bosphorus and are more or less familiar with both the Greek and Turkish nations; the latter they despise with gusto, “porchi di Turci” being the affectionate appellation they bestow on their national neighbors. No sooner did he perceive the real condition of affairs than he began to beat his head, saying that he was disgraced forever, as he never would dare to associate with his countrymen again, as he would be liable to be taken for a porcho di Turco; his frenzy increased to such a pitch that to spare any unpleasantness it was deemed advisable to replace the prepuce, which was done accordingly, the man making a tolerable good recovery, as far as the grafted prepuce was concerned. It required a secondary operation to overcome some cicatricial contraction, and, on the whole, he had a very serviceable prepuce; but, what was more to the point, it prevented his ever being mistaken for a Turk.
CHAPTER VII.
Miracles and the Holy Prepuce.
What strange fancies have circled themselves about the subject of generation or its organisms during the different stages of moral civilization since the world has existed! The efforts in this regard among different creeds have been something peculiar. Neither Mohammedans nor Hebrews—both zealous circumcisers—ever went to the lengths reached by Christian churches and their followers in some particulars concerning this rite; this being especially strange when it is considered that the new creed was the one that abolished the rite and through which the Jews suffered such cruel and unjust persecutions. The early Christian Church celebrated and continues to celebrate the Feast of Circumcision, and history relates some strange events in connection with this circumcision. Having abolished and repudiated the rite, it would seem inconsistent that it should celebrate its performance on any occasion and consider such an event sufficiently memorable that its occurrence should excite the veneration of the church and be the means of exciting the pious zeal of the faithful. The strangest events in this connection are still more mysterious and incomprehensible, if not amusing, the only excuse for the occurrence being the greedy thirst for relics of any and all kinds that in the middle ages pervaded Europe.
At some remote period—in the thirteenth or fourteenth century—the abbey church of Coulombs, in the diocese of Chartres, in France, became possessed in some miraculous manner of the holy prepuce. This holy relic had the power of rendering all the sterile women in the neighborhood fruitful,—a virtue, we are told, which filled the benevolent monks of the abbey with a pardonable amount of pride. It had the additional virtue of inducing a subsequent easy delivery, which also added to the reputation and pardonable vanity of the good monks. This last virtue, however, we are told, came near causing the loss to the abbey of this inestimable prize, for, as a French writer observes, a too great reputation is at times an unlucky possession; at any rate, the royal spouse of good and valiant King Henry V—he of Agincourt, whom England waded up to its knees in the sea at Dover to meet on his return from that campaign—had followed the example of all good dames and was about to give England an heir. Henry then governed a good part of France. Having heard of the wonderful efficacy of the relic of Coulombs, he early one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused; there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could not be duplicated; so the poor monks with the greatest reluctance parted with their precious relic, entrusting it into the hands of the royal envoy, which wended its way to London, where it in due time, being touched by the queen, insured a safe delivery. Honest Henry then returned the relic to France; but so great was its reputation that royalty caused a special sanctuary to be erected for its reception, and a full period of twenty-five years occurred before the monks of Coulombs again regained possession of their prize, during which period the population of the neighborhood must have suffered from the natural increase of sterility and the physicians must have reaped a rich harvest owing to the increased difficulty and complications of labor induced by the absence of the relic. On its return, the relic was found to have lost none of its virtues, and the good people and monks were all correspondingly made happy; in 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous “Droll Stories” without straining his imagination.
So great an attraction was not to go without attempted rivalry or imitators; hence we find in the “Dictionary of Moreri,” edition of 1715, in the third volume, at page 108, that several other establishments claim the honor of a like relic,—namely, the Cathedral of Puy, in Velay; the collegial church of Antwerp; the Abbey of our Saviour, of Charroux; and the Church of St. John Lateran, in Rome. All of these have had very adventurous histories. The Abbey of Charroux was founded by Charlemagne in 788, and among the relics with which that monarch endowed the abbey the principal one was a fragment of the holy prepuce. This abbey enjoyed great reputation, and indulgences were granted by Papal bull to all those who assisted at the adoration of the relics. In the internecine wars of the sixteenth century the abbey fell into the hands of the godless and heretical Huguenots and the holy relic disappeared. In 1856, while some workmen were at work demolishing an ancient wall on the abbey site, they discovered some relic cases. The bishop was at once notified, who immediately proceeded to investigate, when, lo and behold! there, sure enough, was a piece of desiccated flesh, with marks of coagulated blood; nothing more or less than the lost prepuce—long lost, but now found. It was placed in charge of the Ursuline Sisterhood, where it has remained ever since undisturbed, except by a controversy in regard to the propriety of the relic, in which the good bishop ambled about in the most ambiguous manner, the only clearly defined portion of his dissertation being the one wherein he laments “the decadence of that truly Christian spirit which animated the laity of the middle ages with a radiant zeal. A piety also pervaded those gentle Christians of former times, who were possessed of a religious instruction which determined for them the tenets of the creed and its practices,—a happy state or condition of affairs, which prevented the intelligence of the faithful from wandering into the sloughs of unprofitable skepticism.” This settled the question as to the propriety of the prepuce being converted into a miracle-working relic; at least, as far as the good bishop was concerned.
It would be an injustice not to mention the other shrines in detail after the prominence that has been given to the abbeys of Coulombs and Charroux; so the history of another will be given. We are not told just how the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome first became possessed of its holy prepuce, but it nevertheless had one; also the only authentic one in existence, like all the others. It disappeared at one of the periodical sackings that Rome has repeatedly suffered at the hands of Goth, Vandal, or Christian. This time it was the soldiery of the eldest son of the church—- Charles V—who did the sacking; it was in the year 1527, a soldier—probably some impious, heathenish mercenary—broke into the holy sanctuary of the church and stole therefrom the box that contained the holy relics, among them the holy prepuce. These impious wretches, as a rule, came to grief in short order; hence we are told that this mercenary and sacrilegious soldier was compelled to secrete his box, when only a short distance from Rome, where the box remains and the mercenary wretch disappears, probably carried off bodily by the devil, as he deserved. Thirty years afterward the box is discovered by a priest, who, ignorant of its contents, carries it to the lady on whose domain it was found. On being opened it was found to contain a piece of the anatomy of Saint Valentine, the lower jaw of Saint Martha, with one tooth still in place, and a small package upon which the name of the Saviour was inscribed. The lady picked up the package, when immediately the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in the process of which, to better satisfy himself, he had the indiscretion to break off a small piece; instantly the most dreadful tempest broke over the place, followed by crashing peals of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning; then a sudden darkness covered the country, and the luckless priest and his assistants fell flat on their sacerdotal noses, feeling that their last hour had arrived.[26]
Wonderful and miraculous cures are performed at these shrines, and some of the cures are of a nature that would baffle the intelligence of the most learned mind to ascertain the intricate and devious way that nature must at times journey to accomplish some of these changes. The writer well remembers seeing, in the Church of Corpus Christi, in Turin,[27] a long hall, covered, from marble pavement to ceiling, with votive tablets, after the manner inaugurated in the old temples of Greece. Modern votaries have the advantage of being able to record their cure, safe venture or escape from peril, by means of faithful representation of the event in painting or drawing, as the material and art is more common now than in the days of ancient Greece, who recorded its cures by simple inscription in laconic terms. Modern medicine labors under the disadvantage of presuming that the people are endowed with an intelligence that was unknown to ancient or mediæval people, when, in fact, the people are as credulous and as subject to imposition as they were in the earlier centuries of the present era. With all its supposed superior intelligence, there is no fatter pasture for quacks and impostors than that presented by the people of the United States. Whenever I see the poor, intelligent, broad-minded physician struggling along, barely able to procure for himself the necessaries required to maintain himself with proper books and appliances, while the itinerant quack or dogmatic practitioner rolls in undeserved affluence, I question the wisdom of our ethical code. Braddock, at the Monongahela, scorned to have his regulars, who had fought under Marlborough and Eugene, break ranks before a lot of breech-clouted savages, and take shelter that the nature of the ground and the trees could afford, thinking it an unfit action for men who had faced the veterans of Louis XIV on many a hard-fought European field. I sometimes think that if our regulars were, for only a season, to follow the example of the provincial militia at that battle, it would be better for the country, the people, science, and last, but not the least, for the profession. The theory that we should not counsel with quacks is altogether mischievous and fallacious, although right and rigidly orthodox in its intent; were we to counsel and meet these gentry, we should expose their ignorance and assumption, and we should not be exposed to the charge of jealousy and of fear to meet them in consultation. I remember on one occasion a client went to a lawyer for advice as to how he might dispossess some parties who had some adverse claim to some property which he owned, after due deliberation and a protracted siege of the house, in the vain hope of gaining admittance; the lawyer advised his client to go and nail up all exits and fasten them in, which had the effect of driving them out. So with our profession—we should not neglect an opportunity of meeting a quack in consultation, regardless of the nature of the case; it is the only way to nail them up; as it is, we have simply chained up the shepherd-dog and given the wolves full play.
The French Guards at Fontenoy, who out of courtesy refused to fire first on the English, may have been very ethical and chivalrous, but they were very foolish, as the English discharge nearly swept them from the field, and but for the Irish Brigade, who knew no ethics, Louis XV would in all likelihood have followed the example of King John, who, after Crecy, visited England for a season. A disregard of ethics gave Copenhagen to Lord Nelson, who insisted on looking at Admiral Parker’s signal to withdraw from action with his sightless eye, which could not see it. A fear of disregarding ethics lost to Grouchy the chance of assisting Napoleon at Waterloo. In our strife against ignorance and quackery the profession should follow the general plan of action usually adopted by Lord Nelson—lie alongside of whom you can and sink or capture your enemy; let each man do his duty; never mind any general plan. A reverse to this mode of fighting invariably lost the battle to the French and Spaniards, who were, as a rule, all tied up in ethical red tape. Our profession is broad, intelligent, and fearless; we do not profess any exclusive dogma, and should not, therefore, exclude persons; as a large ship throws its grappling-irons on to its adversary, we should always seek an opportunity to meet these gentry when practicable. As it is, we have placed them on the vantage-ground of appearing as being persecuted; our ethics need circumcising in this regard, and the prepuce of exclusion should be buried in the sands of the desert.
Moreover, we often are apt to learn something from even the most ignorant of these men. Rush investigated the nature of a cancer-cure by not refusing to meet and talk with one of this kind;[28] Fothergill learned from an old, unlicensed practitioner that there was a knowledge important to the physician beyond that picked up in the pathological laboratory or the study of microscopy; and that the practiced eye of an otherwise unlearned man could detect that there were general physical signs that negatived the unfavorable prognosis suggested by the presence of tube-casts.[29] It is related of Sir Isaac Newton, that while riding homeward one day, the weather being clear and cloudless, in passing a herder he was warned to ride fast or the shower would wet him. Sir Isaac looked upon the man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. “My cow,” answered the man, “always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Worship, and she so twisted it just before I saw you.”[30] Although twisting cow-tails do not figure in his “Principia,” it is very probable that such a lesson was not without its remote effects on a mind like Newton’s. A spider taught a lesson to one of Scotland’s kings; so that one man may learn something from another.
Professor Letenneur, of the Medical School of Nantes, in his “Causerie à propos de la Circoncision,” mentions that the Convent of Saint Corneille, in Compiègne, claims to possess the identical instrument with which the Holy Circumcision was performed. Such a holy relic must have been unusually potential in performing many miracles.
In this connection it will not be amiss to notice the lapping over that the old phallic worship and idea has made on the new religions. It is also as interesting to observe how the human mind still leans toward observances and ideas which are believed to belong to a solely pagan people. Hargrave Jennings, in a chapter devoted to phallic worship among the ancient Gauls, gives many interesting and curious examples, the first example that he notices being that of Saint Foutin (from whom the very expressive French word “foutre” is taken). Foutin was the first Christian bishop of Lyons, and after his death, so intimately was priapic worship intermingled with the religion or theology of the Gauls, that somehow the memory of St. Foutin and the old, dethroned Priapus became commingled, and finally the former was unconsciously made to take the place of the latter. St. Foutin was immensely popular. He was believed to have a wonderful influence in restoring fertility to barren women and vigor and virility to impotent men. It is related that, in the church at Varages, in Provence, to such a degree of reputation had the shrine of this saint risen, it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine. On windy days the beadle and sexton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions are said to have been sadly interfered with. At a church in Embrun there was a large phallus, which was said to be a relic of St. Foutin. The worshippers were in the habit of offering wine to this deity,—after the manner of the early Pagans,—the wine being poured over the head of the organ and caught underneath in a sacred vessel. This was then called “holy vinegar,” and was believed to be an efficacious remedy in cases of sterility, impotence, or want of virility.
Near the city of Bourges, at Bourg Dieu, there existed, during the Roman occupation of Gaul, an old priapic statue, which was worshipped by the surrounding country. The veneration in which it was held and the miracles with which it was accredited made it impolitic as well as impossible for the early missionaries and monks to remove it; it would have created too much opposition. It was therefore allowed to remain, but gradually changed into a saint,—St. Guerluchon,—which, however, did not detract any from its former merit or reputation. Sterile women flocked to the shrine, and pilgrimages and a set number of days of devotion to this saint were in order. Scrapings from this statue infused in water were said to make a miraculous drink which insured conception. Similar shrines to this same saint were erected at other places, and we are told that the good monks, who must have had an intense and lively interest in seeing that the population was increased, were kept busy supplying the statues with new members, as the women scraped away so industriously, either to prepare a drink for themselves or for their husbands, that a phallus did not last long. At one of these shrines, so onerous became the industry of replacing a new phallus to the saint, that the good monks placed an apron over the organ, informing the good women that thereafter a simple contemplation of the sacred organ would be sufficient; and a special monk was detailed to take special charge of this apron, which was only to be lifted in special cases of sterility. By this innovation the good monks stole a march on their brothers in like shrines in other localities, such as those of St. Gilles, in Brittany, or St. Rene, in Anjou, where the old-fashioned scraping and replacing still was in vogue. Near the seaport town of Brest, in Brittany, at the shrine of St. Guignole, the monks adopted a new expedient. They bored a hole through the statue, through which a phallus was made to project horizontally; as fast as the devotees scraped away in front the good monks as industriously pushed forward the wooden peg that formed the phallus, so that it gave the member the miraculous appearance of growing out as fast as scraped off, which greatly added to its reputation and efficacy. The shrine continued in great vigor until the middle of the last century. Delaure mentions a similar shrine at Puy, also in France, which existed up to the outbreak of the French Revolution. The scrapings in this case were immersed in wine, and the guardians of the statue saw to it that no amount of paring or scraping should remove from the saint any of that appearance of vigor or virility which his great reputation demanded, this being done by a similar procedure as followed at the church near Brest, one of the attendants having been sent to investigate into the marvelous growth of the Brest phallus.
CHAPTER VIII.
History of Emasculation, Castration, and Eunuchism.
For the earliest records in regard to emasculation we must go back to mythological relations. In the old legendary lore of ancient Scandinavia or of Germany, the loves and hatreds of their semi-mythological heroes and heroines space over many romantic incidents before reaching a culmination. The swiftly flowing Rhine, with its precipitous banks, eddies, and rapids; the broad and more majestic Danube or Elb; the broad meadows and Druidical groves on its hilly slopes and stretches of dark and gloomy forest,—all conspired to people the fancy with elfs, gnomes, fairies, and goblins, who were more or less intermingled in all the episodes that engaged their semi-mythological heroes. This helped to fill in all their deeds with entertaining incidents; their halls and castles were made necessary accessories by the rigors of the climate, as well as were the beery feasts and carousals with the inspiration of monotonous song also rendered necessaries by the same element; hence, we have various incidents, either entertaining or exciting, connected with their legendary tales, acting like periods of intermission between their love scenes, spites, hatreds, murders, and general cremations. From such material and such opportunities it was comparatively easy for Wagner to construct the thrilling and interesting incidents that compose his opera on the legend of the Nibelungenlied.
The Grecian landscape and topography does not permit of such richness of romantic incidents or details, any more than the love-making of the unfortunate spider who is devoured by his spidery Cleopatra at the end of his first sexual embrace could furnish any incidents for one of Amelie Rives’s spirited novels; so that neither minstrel nor bard have recorded the details of the first emasculating tragedy, which from all accounts was a kind of an Olympian Donnybrook-fair sort of a paricidal-ending tragedy.
Unfortunately, Homer was not there to describe the event, or we might have had a Wagnerian opera with its Plutonic music to illustrate all its incidents; or even a Virgil could have made it into interesting verses; but, as it is, we must content ourselves with the laconic recitals that have been handed down by tradition, and, as all the Greek performances of those days were marked by an intense decisiveness, with an utter lack of circumlocution, it is probable that there was not much to relate beyond the bare facts.
In Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biographies and Mythology” we find it related that Uranos, or Cœlus, was the progenitor of all the Grecian gods. His first children were the Centimanes; his next progeny were the Cyclops, who were imprisoned in Tartarus because of their great strength. This so angered their mother, Gäa, that she incited her next-born children, the Titans, into a rebellion against their father, Uranos. In the general turmoil that followed Uranos was deposed, and, so that he would be incapable of begetting any more children, Saturnus, the youngest of his sons, with a sickle made from a bright diamond, successfully emasculated poor old Uranos. The records are not clear whether the operation only included the penis, or the scrotum and contents, or whether, like the Turkish or Chinese taillè à fleur de ventre, Saturnus made a clean sweep of all the genitals; it is probable that he did, however, as the members fell into the sea, and in the foam caused by the commotion from their contact with the element Venus was born. Meanwhile, the blood that dripped from the wounded surface caused the Giants, the Furies, and the Melian nymphs to spring into life. Uranos is also represented as being the first king of Atlantis; so that the first eunuch was a god and a king, more unfortunate than any of Doran’s heroes, in his “Monarchs Retired from Business,” because he was more effectually retired from business than any monarch that Doran records.
After this the practice seems to have been adopted in a general way; and the fact that the future proceedings of men and things on earth do not much interest these unfortunate members of society in any great degree, interest in worldly affairs and testicles seemingly having been as intimately connected in those early and remote days as with us of the present, it very naturally followed that this disinterestedness, as well as the docility and pliability which emasculation engenders, first suggested their use as servants or in position of trust, as a eunuch, having no incentive either to run away or to embezzle, would naturally be a valued and trusted servant. In the days of eunuchism there were no defaulting bank, city, or county cashiers,—a circumstance which would suggest that such a condition should form one of the qualifications for eligibility to such offices, the very opposition to any such proposal that the class would make showing in itself the benefits that would follow such an innovation, as it would show that the class is not possessed with that total spirit of abnegation requisite in the guardians of public funds. The requirement might be extended to bank-presidents with benefit, if some Cincinnati episodes are any criterion. It is safe to assume that the bank that could advertise, in connection with its attractive quarterly or semi-annual statement, that the president and cashier were properly attested and vouched-for eunuchs would find in the public such a recognition of the fitness of things that the patronage it would receive would soon compel other banks to follow the example. The procedure might, with national benefit, be extended as an ordeal to our legislators at the national capitol, as it would do away with the particular influential lobby so graphically described in Mark Twain’s “Gilded Age.” These things or ideas are merely thrown out as suggestions to be used by those who write those interesting articles in the Forum, or the North American or Fortnightly Reviews, on government and social reforms, as a perusal of the many articles written in that direction will convince any one that, from a practical psychological view of the matter, they are sadly deficient. To make those articles effective the reflex impressions made by the animal on the psychological and moral nature of man should not be neglected.
Semiramis, whose beauty and many accomplishments, assisted by the murders of several of her husbands by the hand of the succeeding one, had this subject in hand in a far more practical manner than it is generally forced on the understanding; hence we see that she was the first to introduce the use of eunuchs in the capacity of servants as well as in official positions in and about the palace, as well as trusting some of the positions of the highest importance to the class. From her epoch, eunuchism has become an inseparable attendant on Oriental despotism, and has so continued to the present day. Like yellow fever, phthisis, and some diseases, as well as many other social afflictions and customs, eunuchism does not seem to flourish beyond certain degrees of north and south latitudes,—a fact that probably assisted Montesquieu to arrive at the conclusion that climate was a powerful factor in all things.
Bergmann, of Strasburg, quotes the ancient traditions, wherein it is stated that man was taught the art of castration by the brute creation. The hyena is cited as having so instructed man by the habit it exhibited of castrating its infant males in removing the testicles with its teeth, the habit being instigated by a jealousy, for fear of future competition in the exercise of the procreative act on the part of the young males. Another tradition attributes its origin to the castor. Bergmann here traces out the etymological relation existing between the name of the operation and that of the animal with that of a Greek verb that forms the root of castrum, or camp; casa, or house; castigare, to arrange; from whence also is traced cosmos, the world; kastorio, the Greek for wishing to build, and the Latin kasturio having the same relative but a more imperative signification; kastor, signifying as loving to build; castitiator, Latin for architect, and casticheur, old French for constructor. The tale or tradition in regard to the self-mutilation inflicted by the castor is traced to the Arabian merchants who purchased the castoreum, which was imported from the shores of the Persian Gulf and from India. It was called, also, by the Arabs, chuzyalu-l-bahhr, or testicles from beyond the sea; or, in French, testicules d’outre mer. These terms and the tradition that the castor on being pursued, knowing the reason of the chase, was in the habit of tearing out his testicles and throwing them at his pursuers, were invented by these merchants to heighten the price and value of the article intrinsically, as well as to make it more interesting by this peculiar individuality of adventure. The Latins, believing and adopting the tradition as a matter of fact, coined the word castorare, or doing like the castor. Bergmann uses in this connection a number of terms in French to denote different forms or degrees of this mutilation which have no equivalents in English,—for instance, chatrure, as applied to animals, making also a distinctive difference between the meaning of the French words castration and chatrement. Bergmann is a decided evolutionist as regards circumcision being evolved from prior forms of physical mutilation, as will be more fully explained in the next chapter; the shaving of the head of a conquered people by the Hindoos, or the shearing the royal locks of the ancient Frankish kings; the blinding of one eye of their slaves by the old Scythians, or crippling one foot by the division of a tendon in a captive by the Goths, he considers as on the same line with the idea that led to castration, the different forms of eunuchism, and circumcision.[31]
From a purely materialistic and utilitarian view of the subject, he observes that what we call moral progress and civilization owe their advancement more to material interest and cold, selfish calculation than to any development of the humanitarian sentiments, and that neither morality nor justice has much to do with it. The evolution of the slave and the marks inflicted upon him by his fellow humans are the most emphatic evidences of the justness of the above proposition. The study of the subject is equally interesting when considered in connection with the evolutions of the Christian Church. In its divergence from Judaism and its beneficent laws, both social and moral, the Christian Church was but illy fit to cope with its persecutors of Pagan tendencies, or to enforce an unwritten law or code of morality or hygiene among an idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass to guide them in the path that was possessed by the Jewish people. The martyrdom of Christ and many of his apostles, and the teachings of the early church, pointed to physical denials, castigations, humiliations, and sufferings as the only way to salvation; all pleasures were sin and all denials and pain were looked upon as steps to heaven. The climate pointed to sexual indulgence as the sum of all happiness, as can readily be inferred from the Mohammedan idea of heaven; so, with the early Christians who were born in the same climates, the denials of sexual pleasures were looked upon as the most acceptable offering that man could make to the Deity. Continence, celibacy, infibulation, and even castration were the conditions looked upon by many of these men as the only means of living a life on earth that would grant them an eternal life in the next. This view of the situation peopled the deserts with a lot of men dwelling in caves and in huts, living on such a scarce diet that they barely existed. That many went insane, and in their frenzy died while roaming in these solitudes, we have ample evidence. The tortures and impositions of the Pagan rulers also drove many to this life or death.
Religious mania has caused many cases of self-mutilation, either to escape continued promptings and desires, or simply from a resulting species of insanity. Of the first, Sernin[33] reported to the Medical Society of Paris the case of a young priest who had castrated himself with the blade of a pair of scissors, and who nearly lost his life with the subsequent hæmorrhage. The writer saw an analogous case on board an American war-vessel, of which Dr. Lyon was surgeon, in the harbor of Havre, in the spring of 1871, the subject being the ship’s cobbler, a religious fanatic, who was driven insane by self-imposed continence. We are not surprised, from the lack of intelligence of the times, the extreme but undefined views as to religion that then ruled men, that self-imposed castration should have been sanely considered and carried into effect by Origines and his monks. The Cybelian priesthood had formerly set the example in their Pagan worship, and when we are told that the monks of Mount Athos accused the monks of the convent of a neighboring island with falling away from grace, because they allowed hens to be kept within the convent inclosure, we may well believe that Origines and his monks felt that they were gradually ascending in grace when they submitted to this sacrifice. As strange as it may sound, self-castration is still practiced by the Skoptsy, a religious sect in Russia. In justice to the Church, however, it must be said that she neither asked for nor did she sanction these performances, although she was not quick enough in asserting that she recognized the same law in regard to her presbytery that controlled that of the Hebraic priesthood.
Eunuchism presents many contradictory conditions; eunuchs have not always been the fat and sleek attendants on Oriental harems as tradition and custom places them or would have us believe; neither does the loss of virility, in a procreative sense, seem to have always robbed them of their virility in other senses, as we find eunuchs holding the highest offices in the State under the reigns of Alexander, the Ptolemys, Lysimachus, Mithrades, Nero, and Arcadius. The eunuch Aristonikos, under one of the Ptolemys, and another, Narces, under Justinian, led the armies of their sovereigns. These are, however, exceptional cases; as a rule, the result is as we observe in the domestic animals,—loss of spirit, vim, and ambition. The Church recognized this result, and, while the Hebraic law excluded eunuchs from participating in the priesthood as being imperfect and unclean, the Church reproached Origines and his monks and excluded eunuchs from its presbytery on the ground that such beings lack the moral and physical energy requisite in a calling that is supposed to guide or lead men; moreover, there are many reasons for doubting that the ministers of state and the generals of the reigns above mentioned were actually eunuchs in the full acceptance of the word. Among the ancients there were several methods of performing the operations that made the eunuchs; some were more effectual than others. From the removal of all the genitals, or the penis alone, or the scrotum and testicles, or removing only the testicles, down to compression or to distorting the spermatic vessels, or, as in the case of the Scythians, who often became eunuchs from bareback riding, as Hammond describes a eunuchism manufactured by our southwestern Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, are performances that left many degrees of eunuchism; as we find some eunuchs that not only contracted marriage, but engendered children. Voltaire mentions Kislav-aga, of Constantinople, a eunuch à outrance, with neither penis, scrotum, nor anything, who owned a large and select harem. Montesquieu, in his “Persian Letters,” admits this class of marriages as being practiced, but doubts the resulting conjugal felicity, especially on the part of the wife. Potiphar’s wife was one of these unfortunate wives; no wonder that she tore Joseph’s cloak in her desire. Juvenal mentions that some eunuchs were held in high esteem by the Roman matrons; it possibly could have been some of this kind of a eunuch that led armies or ruled in the palaces. Among the sultans and Oriental potentates those who had every exterior evidence of virility removed, so as to be obliged to micturate through the means of a catheter, were considered the safest guards, as well as they were the highest-priced eunuchs, for in their manufacture fully 75 per cent. of those operated upon died as a result. It is related that the Caribs made eunuchs of their prisoners of war on the same principle that caponizing is resorted to for our kitchens,—the prisoners were easier to fatten and were more tender when cooked. The Italians allowed their children to be eunuchized for chorister purposes in church services, their soprano voices after this treatment being simply perfect. It was considered that, in the year prior to the papal ordinance of Pope Clement XVI forbidding the practice or the employment of eunuchs in choirs, four thousand boys, mostly in the neighborhood of Rome, were castrated for chorister purposes.
In China eunuchs were in use during the reign of the Emperor Yen-Wang, in 781 B.C. The Chinese make their eunuchs by a complete ablation of all genitals. In India the followers of Brahma never placed their women in charge of eunuchs. In Italy it was customary to emasculate boys that they might grow up with the faculty of taking the female parts in comedies, their voices thereby assimilating to that of the other sex, this being on the same principle that the basso-profundos were infibulated that they might retain their bass.
Eunuchism resulting from an operation owing to disease has at times given queer and unlooked-for results, as, for instance, in the case of the old man that Sprengle mentions, in whom castration did not remove an inordinate sexual desire. Sir Astley Cooper mentions a case in his “Diseases of the Testes” that is somewhat unique. After castration Sir Astley’s patient showed the following results: “For nearly the first twelve months he stated that he had emissions in coitu, or that he had the sensations of emission; that then he had erections and coitus at distant intervals, but without the sensation of emission. After two years he had excretions very rarely and very imperfectly, and they generally ceased immediately upon the attempt at coitus. Ten years after the operation he said he had during the past year been only once connected. Twenty-eight years after the operation he stated that for years he had seldom any excretion, and then that it was imperfect.” In regard to the mortality from castration done in a professional manner and for disease, Curling, in his work on “Diseases of the Testis,” observes that he saw or performed some thirty operations without a death, and that in a table of like operations performed at the Hôtel Dieu, in Paris, it appeared that the mortality was one in four and a quarter.
J. Royes Bell, in the sixth volume of the “International Encyclopædia of Surgery,” has the following in regard to the practice among the Mohammedans in India: “Young boys are brought from their parents, and the entire genitals are removed with a sharp razor. The bleeding is treated by the application of herbs and hot poultices; hæmorrhage kills half the victims, and at times brings the perpetrators of the vile proceeding within the clutches of the law.
” The taillè à fleur de ventre of the Chinese is a somewhat primitive procedure. According to Dr. Morache, in his account of China in the “Dic. Ency. des Sciences Médicales,” the operation is as follows: “The patient, be he adult or child, is, previous to the operation, well fed for some time. He is then put in a hot water bath. Pressure is exercised on the penis and testes, in order to dull sensibility. The two organs are compressed into one packet, the whole encircled with a silk band, regularly applied from the extremity to the base, until the parts have the appearance of a long sausage. The operator now takes a sharp knife, and with one cut removes the organ from the pubis; an assistant immediately applies to the wound a handful of styptic powder, composed of odoriferous raisins, alum, and dried puffball powder (boletus-powder). The assistant continues the compression till hæmorrhage ceases, adding fresh supplies of the astringent powders; a bandage is added and the patient left to himself. Subsequent hæmorrhage rarely occurs, but obliteration of the canal of the urethra is to be dreaded. If at the end of the third or fourth day the patient does not make water, his life is despaired of. In children the operation succeeds in two out of three cases; in adults, in one-half less. Poverty is the cause which induces adults to allow themselves to be thus mutilated. It is said to be difficult to distinguish these last from ordinary Chinese men. Adult-made eunuchs are much sought after, as they present all the attributes of virility without any of its inconvenience.”
The study of the evolutionary moves or processes passed by eunuchism in its relation to music and the drama tends to rob these otherwise civilizing and enlightened arts of the aureoles of poetry and gentility with which they have been surrounded. From Bergmann we learn that the practice originated in the Orient, where female voices were held in higher esteem in singing, and where the profane songs that accompanied the dance were chanted by women. The Hebraic regulations permitted neither women nor eunuchs to sing in their temples. With the establishment of the early Christian Church in Oriental countries, more or less of the ancient Judaic customs were retained, and in addition a too literal interpretation of the words of St. Paul was adhered to, which said that women should not be heard in the Church. The Oriental Church from these reasons long remained in a quandary; according to the ceremonials, it was deemed requisite to imitate as near as possible the voices of the angelic seraphims, and this could not be done by the rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of Cybele, had done before him.
Constantinople became the centre of learning for Greek music, and the fine soprano solos which now form the attraction of many of our modern churches were sung by the eunuchs. Eunuchs were not only the chief singers, but they cultivated the art into a science, and Constantinople furnished through this class the music-teachers for the world, as we learn that in 1137 the eunuch Manuel and two other singers of his order established a school of music and singing in Smolensk, Russia. There is no doubt but that in a moral sense, considering that women are generally the pupils, this was a most meet and an appropriate arrangement; for, as St. Alphonsus M. Liquori observed, man was a fool to allow his daughters or female wards to be taught letters by a man, even if that man were a saint, and, as real saints were not to be found outside of heaven, it can well be imagined how much more dangerous it might be to have them taught music and singing by a man not a eunuch,—elements which have a recognized special aphrodisiac virtue, as was well known to the ancient Greeks, who only allowed their wives to listen to a certain form of music when they (the husbands) were absent from home.
There is not much room for doubt but that both morality and medicine have too much neglected the study and contemplation of the natural history of man, and relied altogether too much on the efficacy of church regulations and castor-oil and rhubarb. There are other things to be done besides simply framing moral codes and pouring down mandrake into the stomach; the old conjoined service of priest and doctor should never have been discontinued, as, by dividing duties that are inseparable, much harm has resulted. Herein dwelt the great benefit of the early practice of medicine among the Greeks, and to the physical understanding and supervision of human nature by the Hebraic law may be said that the creed owes its greatness and stability, and the Hebrew race its sturdy stamina. The wisdom of the Mosaic laws is something that always challenges admiration, the secret being that it did not separate the moral from the physical nature of man. Bain, Maudsley, Spencer, Haeckle, Buckle, Draper, and all our leading sociologists base all their arguments on the intimate relations that exist between the physical surrounding and the physical condition of man and his morality. Churches foolishly ignore all this.
From Constantinople the fashion or custom gradually invaded Italy; and as Rome was the centre of the new religion, so it also became the centre of music, and Rome and Naples were soon the home of the eunuch devoted or immolated to the science of music. The eunuchs reached the height of their renown in music, as well as what might be termed their golden era, with the establishment of the Italian opera, in the seventeenth century. At this period all the stages of Italy were the scenes of the lyric triumphs of this otherwise unfortunate class, some of whom accumulated vast fortunes. In the following century, as has been seen, Clement XVI abolished the practice as far as the church was concerned, and in the present century the first Napoleon abolished the practice secularly and socially. Mankind cannot sufficiently appreciate the benefits it received from the results of the French Revolution; we are too apt to look at that event simply from the unavoidable means which an uneducated class—rendered desperate by long suffering and brutalization under an organized system of oppressive misrule—had adopted to remedy existing evils. After the dissolution of the Directory France cannot be said to have been in a state of anarchy, and the long and bloody wars with which Napoleon is usually blamed should rather be charged to that government and imbecile ministerial policy that lost to England the American colonies. The series of battles from Marengo to Waterloo are as much the creation of the cabinet of George III as those from Concord to Yorktown. Waterloo involved more than the simple defeat of Napoleon; it meant the defeat of moral and intellectual progress, as well as the suppression of the rights of man. The suppression of the Inquisition in Spain, and of eunuchism in Italy; the Code Napoleon; the Imperial highways of France; the construction of its harbors,—notably that of Havre; and the political and social emancipation of the Jews in France, Italy, and Germany are monuments to this great man that have not their equals to crown the acts of any other French monarch. Like the Phrygian monk who leaped into the arena in Rome to separate the maddened gladiators, and who was stoned to death by the angry and brutal mob of spectators whose amusement he stopped, Napoleon’s work has had its results, in spite of Waterloo and St. Helena. The martyrdom of the poor monk caused an abolishment of the brutal sports of the Colosseum, which henceforth crumbled to pieces. Little did the people look for this result who trampled the monk under foot. Neither did Blucher, debouching on the English left with Bulow’s battalions on the evening of Waterloo, foresee, some fifty years later, Prussia extending its hand to make a united Italy, which with Napoleon—who was by blood, nature, instinct, and education an Italian—had been the dream and ambition of his life.
Eunuchism as a punishment is an old practice, as the ancient Egyptians inflicted it at times upon their prisoners of war; so it formed part of their penal code, and we are told that rape was punished by the loss of the virile organ; a like punishment for the same offense was in vogue with the Spaniards and Britons; with the Romans at different times and with the Poles the punishment was castration. The difficulty of proving the crime, as well as the ease with which the crime could be charged through motives of revenge, spite, or cupidity on innocent persons, should never have allowed this form of punishment to be so generally used as history relates that it was; rape being one of the most complex and intricate of medico-legal subjects, unless we take M. Voltaire’s summary and Solomonic judgment, who relates that a queen, who did not wish to listen to a charge of rape made by one person against another, took the scabbard of a sword and, while she kept the open end in motion, asked the accuser to sheath the sword.
Count Raoul Du Bisson, Dedjaz de l’Abyssinie, gives some very interesting information in regard to eunuchism in his work entitled “The Women, the Eunuchs, and the Warriors of the Soudan.” Count Bisson has looked on the question from its moral, physical, and demographic stand-points, and, having seen eunuchism in its different aspects, from his landing at Alexandria and Cairo, down through his different expeditions into Arabia, the Soudan, and Abyssinia, his observations are well worth repeating.
From a demographic and statistical view of the subject, its truly Malthusian results become at once shockingly and persistently prominent,—not alone in the interference that the condition induces in arresting any further procreation on the part of the unfortunate victim, but in the unparalleled mortality that, in the gross, is made necessary by the results of the operative procedures. The Soudan alone furnished, according to reliable statistics, some 3800 eunuchs annually, the material coming from Abyssinia and the neighboring countries, it being gathered by war and kidnapping parties, or by purchase, from among the young male population of those regions. These children are brought to the Soudan frontier and custom duties are there paid for their passage across the border, the duty being about two dollars per head. At Karthoum they are purchased by pharmacists, apothecaries, and others engaged in the manufacture of eunuchs, who generally perform simple castration; the mortality among these amounts to about 33 per cent. These simply castrated eunuchs bring about $200 apiece. The great eunuch factory of the country, however, is to be found on Mount Ghebel-Eter, at Abou-Gerghè; here a large Coptic monastery exists, where the unfortunate little African children are gathered. The building is a large, square structure, resembling an ancient fortress; on the ground-floor the operating-room is situated, with all the appliances required to perform these horrible operations. The Coptic monks do a thriving business, and furnish Constantinople, Arabia, and Asia Minor with many of their complete, much-sought-for, and expensive eunuchs. They here manufacture both grades,—those who are simply castrated and those on whom complete ablation of all organs has been performed, the latter bringing from $750 to $1000 per head, as only the most robust are taken for this operation, which nevertheless, even at the monastery, has a mortality of 90 per cent.
The manner of performing the operation is as barbarous and revolting as the nature of the operation itself, and the cruel and ignorant after-treatment is as fully in keeping with the whole. The little, helpless, and unfortunate prisoner or slave is stretched out on an operating-table; his neck is made fast in a collar fastened to the table, and his legs spread apart and the ankles made fast to iron rings; his arms are each held by an assistant. The operator then seizes the little penis and scrotum and with one sweep of a sharp razor removes all the appendages. The resulting wound necessarily bares the pubic bones and leaves a large, gaping sore that does not heal kindly. A short bamboo cannula or catheter is then introduced into the urethra, from which it is allowed to project for about two inches, and no attention is paid to any arterial hæmorrhage; the whole wound is simply plastered up with some hæmostatic compound and the little victim is then buried in the warm sand up to his neck, being exposed to the hot, scorching rays of the sun; the sand and soil is tightly packed about his little body so as to prevent any possibility of any movement on the part of the child, perfect immobility being considered by the monks as the main element required to promote a successful result. It is estimated that 35,000 little Africans are annually sacrificed to produce the Soudanese average quota of its 3800 eunuchs.
When this immense sacrifice of life, the useless barbarity, and the really unnecessary needs of such mutilated humanity existing are fully considered, it would seem as if Christian nations might, with some reason, interfere in this horrible traffic, by the side of which ordinary slavery seems but a trifle. When we further consider that, in some instances, the child is also made mute by the excision of part of the tongue,—as mute or dumb eunuchs are less apt to enter into intrigues, and are therefore higher prized,—the barbarity, cruelty, and extremes of inhumanity that these poor children have to suffer cannot be overestimated. Neither must we be astonished at the stolid indifference that is exhibited by the eunuchs in after life to any or all sentiments of humanity, or that they should hold the rest of humanity in continual execration.
Often-occurring accidents in harems make complete eunuchs a desideratum. Bisson mentions that on one occasion he saw the chief eunuch of the Grand Cherif of Mecca—a large, finely-proportioned, powerful black—on his way to Stamboul for trial and sentence; he was heavily chained and well guarded. It appears that the eunuch had only been partly castrated, and that the operation had been performed during infancy; his testicles had not fully descended, so that in the operation the sac was simply obliterated, which gave him the appearance of a eunuch. In this condition he seemed to have kept a perfect control of himself and passions until made chief eunuch of the Cherif, who possessed a well-assorted harem of choice Circassian, Georgian, and European beauties. The négligé toilet of the harem bath and the seductive influence of this terrestrial Koranic seventh heaven was too much for the warm Soudanese blood of the chief; his forays were not suspected until a blonde Circassian houri presented her lord and master, the Cherif, with a suspiciously mulatto-looking son and heir. A consultation of the Koran failed to explain this discrepancy, and suspicion pointed to the chief eunuch, who was accordingly watched; it was found that he had not only corrupted the fair Circassian, but every inmate of the harem as well. The harem was promptly sacked and drowned and the false eunuch shipped to the Sultan for sentence, the Cherif having the right to sentence and drown the harem, but having no such rights over such a high personage as the chief eunuch.
There are physiological facts and pathological conditions brought forth for our contemplation, while investigating the subject of eunuchism in all its details, that cause us to feel that, after all, the old Hippocratic principle of inductive philosophy, upon which our study and practice of medicine is founded, with rational experience and observation for its corner-stone, is, even if commonplace, the only proper avenue of knowledge. To exemplify this proposition we have in this particular subject the practical observations and experience of M. Mondat, of Montpellier; in his interesting work on “De la Stérilité de l’Homme et de la Femme,” published in 1840, he details some instructive information on the subject of eunuchs, giving some explanation as to why many simply castrated eunuchs are, like the much-prized eunuchs of the Roman matrons, still able to acquit themselves of the copulative function. He mentions that while in Turkey he studied the subject in its details, and, having found some of these copulating eunuchs, he secured some of the ejaculated fluid and subjected it to a careful examination. The discharge was lacking the characteristic seminal odor; it was in other respects, to the palpation especially, very much like the seminal fluid. He found that these eunuchs were much given to venereal enjoyment, but that either legitimate intercourse or masturbation, to which many were addicted, was apt to be followed by a marasmus ending in galloping consumption. Mondat personally knew the opera-singer Velutti, who died in London; Velutti was, when a child, castrated by his parents, having both testicles removed, being intended by his father, who had himself performed the operation, for the choir of the Papal Chapel at Rome. Velutti was as much of a favorite in his day as our present tenors and handsome actors. The admiration of the opposite sex was fatal to him; he formed a liaison with a young English lady residing in London, and the resulting excesses in which he indulged quickly brought him to his grave. He was passionately fond of women and was able to acquit himself perfectly; at least, as far as the copulative act—barring fecundation—was concerned.
In a previous part of this chapter I have alluded to the very appropriate arrangement which formerly existed when music-teachers were eunuchs, and that our higher circles of society would do well to employ eunuchized coachmen, especially if possessed of susceptible and elopable daughters; but, from the accounts given by Mondat, it would seem that they are not as safe as might at first be imagined. However, they could not be as dangerous as the chief eunuch of the Grand Cherif of Mecca and increase the population to the same extent; but I should judge that they might be a very demoralizing moral element if introduced into modern society. If eunuchs must be employed, it can easily be understood why the Turk and Chinese prefer the real, clean-cut article. The New York “Four Hundred” should make a note of this, as in their present thirst for European aristocratic notions, coats of arms and titles, there is no telling how soon they may cross over into Oriental customs and run a harem, in which case it would be sad to have them make any mistakes in the quality and ability of the eunuch.
Dr. Gardner W. Allen has furnished the American profession with a faithful translation of the valuable work of Professor Ultzmann on “Sterility and Impotence.” In this, we have a clear and intelligent dissertation that explains the above conditions, and I am only surprised that the observations of Mondat have not developed such explanations before, as the principle was fully explained in practice fifty years ago by the Montpellier physician. According to Ultzmann, there is a form of fecundating impotence in persons otherwise well provided with an apparent complete apparatus, an impotence which he terms potentia generandi. He states, however, that this form of impotence was not recognized until a few years ago, citing the fact that females have had, as a rule, to bear all of the blame for the unfruitfulness of the family, and that they have been accordingly subjected to all manner of operations, general and local treatment, even to being sent to watering places and sanatoria where red-headed male attendants are employed, to say nothing of the prayers, intercessions, pilgrimages, and novenas to the holy shrines, as mentioned in the chapter on the holy prepuce. Ultzmann observes that a man may be perfectly able to go through the procreative or, rather, the copulative act, even to the great satisfaction of all parties concerned, and yet be perfectly impotent; he even goes further, by observing that there are cases in which copulation may take place without any fluid whatever being ejaculated. He mentions two such cases at pages 87 and 116 of his book. In the first instance the ejaculated fluid is precisely as that observed in such cases as those of the eunuchs and of Velutti, mentioned by Mondat, and consisted of an azoöspermic discharge, made up mainly from the secretion of the seminal vesicles, the accessory glands of the urethra, the prostate, and Cowper’s glands, as well as the discharge from the secretory glands distributed along the course of the urethral mucous membrane. Some of the cases of this form of impotence have exhibited wonderful copulating desire and power of endurance, and, even if unfecundating, they must be said to be better off than the victims of that other form of male impotence, the potentia coeundi of Ultzmann, where, with a normal semen, either the power of erection or that of ejaculation may be entirely absent.
CHAPTER IX.
Philosophical Considerations Relating to Eunuchism and Medicine.
Eunuchism does not always subdue the animal passions; this is the view that the church took in connection with the emasculation of Origenes and his monks; the church here held that not only was it possible for them to still sin in heart or imagination, but that, even were the complete eradication of the sexual idea possible, they had by their act lost the main glory of a Christian,—that of successfully striving against temptation, and by a force born of triumphant virtue overcome all the wiles of the devil. It is related that among the eunuchs at Rome there were some who, having been made so late in life, still retained the power of copulation, although the final act of the performance was absent. Montfalcon relates that Cabral reported dissecting a soldier who was hanged for committing a rape, but who on dissection showed not the least trace of testicles, either in the scrotum or abdomen, although the seminal vesicles were filled with some fluid.[34] Sprengle, in his “History of Medicine,” relates of the complete removal of both testicles from an old man of seventy years of age, on account of inordinate sexual desire, the operation having no perceptible effect in subduing the disease.[35] These cases are analogous to those exceptionable cases in which, after extirpation of the ovaries, both menstruation and fecundation have still taken place.
Modern civilization and its unnatural mode of dressing inflict great harm on men by keeping these parts too warm and constricted. Much of the irritability of these organs, as well as their decadence at an age some generation or two before the time when they should still possess all their virile attributes, can be directly attributed to this cause. A more intelligent way of dressing would result in less moral and physical wreckage, and require less galvanic belts and aphrodisiacs in men under fifty. If those who habitually swath their scrotums in the heavy folds of their flannel shirts, to which are superadded the cotton shirts, drawers, and outer clothes in which civilized man incases himself, would cast a backward eye into the dim and misty past, and see the priest of some of the old Pagan gods soaking the scrotum in hot water, and then gradually rubbing the testicles within, by gentle but firm friction, to make the testicles disappear, a process by which many of the heathen priests prepared themselves for the discharge of their sacerdotal duties and the strict observance of those rules of chastity and celibacy which they were henceforth to live up to, they would find one explanation of why civilized man does not possess that vigor and retain that procreative power into advanced age that was one of the characteristics of our ancient progenitors in the days that breeches were as abbreviated as those now worn by the Sioux Indians. These are really but leggins, which run only to the perineum and are simply tied by outer points to a strap from each hip. Finely and comfortably cushioned chairs may be a luxury to sit on, but they will have, on the man who uses them in youth and in his prime, a wonderful sedative and moral influence later on, about as effectual as the miniature warm baths for the scrotum and gentle pressure to the testicles that were used by the heathen priests of old, who preferred a gradual disappearance of the glands to the too sudden and summary methods of the Cybelian clergy, who used a piece of shell and an elaborately-performed castration. According to Paulus Ægineta, this was a common practice of making eunuchs out of young boys in the Orient, the mortality being hardly any; whereas the taillè à fleur de ventre, the favorite method for making eunuchs for harem guards and attendants, and more suited to the jealous disposition of the Turk, has a mortality of three out of every four, according to Chardin, and of two out of every three, according to Clot Bey, the chief physician of the Pasha,[36] and of nine out of ten, according to Bisson. So prone to reach high offices were intelligent eunuchs that it is related that parents were at times induced to treat their boys in the manner above stated, that they might be on the highway to royal favor, honor, and rank; such is the ennobling tendency of Oriental despotism, polygamy, and harem life. On the same principle Europeans subjected their boys to a like operation to fit them for a chorister life or the stage, where fame and honor and wealth were to be found.
Medicine has been the butt of wits and philosophers, as well as of the men who, from the profession, have gone into the ranks of literature. Smollet, himself a physician, gives us an insight into our wandering and erratic misapplication of our knowledge on therapeutics in “Peregrine Pickle,” where the poor painter, Pallet, is believed to be a victim of hydrophobia. The learned opinion of the doctor, who explains the many and various reasons by which he arrives at his diagnosis, the various physical signs exhibited by the patient as being pathognomonic of the disease, and his final venture with the contents of the pot de chambre, as a diagnosis verifier, which he dashes in the patient’s face in preference to ordinary water on account of the medicinal virtues contained in urine, which in the case seemed to him to have a peculiar therapeutic value, is something worth reading, however ludicrous it all sounds. There are few intelligent physicians but who have seen as ridiculous performances, in what might be called medical gymnasts, that equal, if not surpass, those of Smollet’s doctor. Rabelais was also a professional brother, who, equally with Smollet, attempted to waken up the profession by his satires. Smollet was not only a physician, but in his early life had seen some very active and practical work, having participated in and been a witness to the ills and misfortunes that follow any attempts to “lock horns” with nature through ignorance of physical laws and preventive medicine,—having been a surgeon’s mate in the fleet which assisted the land forces in the murderous and ill-fated Carthagena expedition which cost England so many lives, ignorantly and needlessly sacrificed to ministerial disregard of physical laws and its consequences,—lessons which, unfortunately, seem to have but little effect on cabinets, owing to their shifting personelle, England following up the disasters of Carthagena with the still greater blunder of the Walcheren expedition, where, out of England’s small available physical war material, nearly forty thousand men were either left to fatten the swamps of Walcheren, or to wander through England in after years on the pension-list, physical wrecks and in bodily and financial misery.[37] Again, the same disregard, born of ignorance and red tape, crippled the British army in the Crimea, causing in its ranks the greatest mortality. It has seemed as if it would be of advantage if all the blunders, either philosophical or of statesmanship, committed by a cabinet, should be written in large letters of gold, to be hung in the council-halls of the nations, that similar blunders at least might not occur again.
Dumas, in his “History of the Two Centuries” and his “History of the Century of Louis the XIV,” gives some very interesting medical touches. Le Sage, in his “Adventures of Gil Blas,” gives us food for speculating on medical philosophy in connection with the interesting subject of how to make the profession remunerative. Dickens’s ideas of the doctor, as given in his works, are life touches. Witness his description of the little doctor who superintended little David Copperfield’s advent into the world, or of Dr. Slammer of the army; they represent his view of the professional character. Fontenelle, probably, was right in ascribing the fact of his becoming a centenarian, and maintaining a stomach with the force and resistance that are the peculiar characteristics and attributes of a chemical retort, to the fact that when sick it was his practice to throw the doctor’s physic out of the window as the doctor went out of the door, as in his day a man required the constitution of a rhinoceros and the stomach of an ostrich, with the external insensibility of a crocodile, to withstand the ordinary doctor of the period and his medications. Napoleon believed that Baron Larrey was the most virtuous, intelligent, useful, and unselfish man in existence; in fact, it is doubtful if any man of his time commanded from this truly great man so much admiration or respect, either for bravery, courage, intelligence, or activity, as the great and simple-minded Larrey. As observed by Napoleon of his bravest general,—poor Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, the rear guard of the grand army, the last man to leave Russian soil,—Ney was a lion in action, but a fool in the closet. All his generals had some great distinguishing characteristic, beyond which was a barren waste, a vacuity, but too apparent to a man of Napoleon’s discernment. But the cool, unflinching bravery of Larrey, that did not require the stimulus of the fight or the phrenzy of strife to bring it to the surface and keep it alive; bravery and intelligence alike active under showers of shot and shell or in the thunders of charging squadrons; in the face of infective epidemics or contagiousness, walking about in these scenes in which his own life was as much at stake as that of the meanest soldier, with the same cool exercise of his intelligence that he exhibited in the organization and superintendence of his hospitals in the time of peace; always the same, untiring, unmurmuring, brave, studious, observing, unflinching in his duties, unselfish; whether in the burning sands of Egypt or in the snowy steppes of Russia, in the marshy plains of Italy or in the highlands of Spain, he always found him the same, and his notes and observations, from his first government service on the Newfoundland coast to his last, always showed him the same laborer and student in the field of medicine. And yet at St. Helena we find Napoleon refusing to take remedies for internal disease whose real nature was unknown, and only toward the end did he consent to take anything, and then only when seeing that the end was approaching, and more from a kindly desire to express his appreciation of the services of his attendants, and not to wound their feelings, than from any hope of assistance. Napoleon had not neglected the study of medicine any more than he had the study of every other science. This is evident from the instance related as taking place during the march of the grand army from the confines of Poland into Russia, in 1812, when dysentery became very prevalent, of his inviting several of his favorite guard to his own table, where he experimented on each particular grenadier with a specific form of diet, so as to determine its cause and possible remedy. He did not look upon our knowledge of pathology and our skill in diagnosis as being sufficiently advanced or perfect to make him feel but that a treatment for an obscure disease like his own would be pretty much a matter of guess-work. Charles Reade, in his “Man and Wife,” shows an intimate knowledge of medical science where he philosophizes on the effects of an irregular life and of over-physical training. His logic is sound science. Defoe and Cervantes show a like intelligent insight as to medicine; and it was not without reason that Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, advised a student of medicine who entered his office as a student to begin the study of medicine by the careful study of “Don Quixote,” remarking that he found it a work of great value, which he still often read. The works of Bacon and of Adam Smith on “Moral Sentiments;” the famous treatise on the “Natural History of Man,” by the Rev. John Adams; the later works of Buckle, Spencer, Darwin, Draper, Lecky, and other robust wielders of the Anglo-Saxon pen, as well as the works of Montaigne, Montesquieu, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, are all works that the medical man could probably read with more profit than loss of time. In fact, either Hume, Macaulay, or any philosophical work on history will furnish to the physician additional knowledge of use in his profession. No physician can afford to neglect any study that in any manner adds to his knowledge of the natural history of man, as therein is to be found the foundation of our knowledge as to what constitutes health, and as to what are the causes that lead humanity to diverge from the paths of health into those of physical degeneracy and mental and bodily disease.
We have in medicine many sayings which pass for truisms, which are, after all, misleading. We say, for instance, keep the feet warm and the head cool; this will not always either keep you comfortable or well, as we know that in neuralgias it is absolutely necessary, either for comfort or to get well, to keep the head warm. While so much stress is laid on the necessity of keeping the head cool, a thing a person is sure to look after whenever the head becomes uncomfortably warm, and to which can be ascribed but few ailments or deaths, we hear comparatively nothing about the thermometric condition of the perineum, which, from the varying temperatures in which it is at times plunged, produces more beginnings for diseases in the future, during youth and our prime, as well as it quite often causes the sudden ending of life in more advanced periods. People who carefully observe the rule of keeping their heads cool and their feet warm will stand with outspread legs and uplifted coat-tails with their backs to a blazing grate, and then, going outside, incontinently sit down on a stone or iron door-step, or, stepping into a carriage or other vehicle, they sit down on a cold oil-cloth or leather cushion, without the least knowledge of the harm or danger that they are liable to incur. They little dream of the prostatic troubles that lie in wait for the unwary sitter on cold places, ready to pounce upon him like the treacherous Indian lying in ambush,—troubles that carry in their train all the battalions of urethral, bladder, kidney disease and derangments, and subsequent blood disorganization, which often begin in a chilled perineum, and, in conjunction with the local disease that may result, end in handing us over to Father Charon for ferriage across the gloomy Styx long before our life’s journey is half over. It is true, neither the savage of Africa or America nor the nomads of Asia are subject to any of these troubles; but with us, hampered with all the benefits of the dress, diet, habits, and luxuries of civilization, and with a civilized prostatic gland, it is quite otherwise. Herein, again, comes that connection between religion, morality, and medicine, that existed with so much benefit to mankind, but from which we of later days have, in our greater wisdom, seen fit to separate; although, inconsistently as it may seem, the present age has done more than any previous epoch in practically demonstrating the intimate and inseparable relation existing between the physical and moral nature of man. The persistent priapism which oftentimes results from riding with a wet seat and the inordinate morbid sensibility of the sexual organs that may result from the same cause or from spinal irritation are not to be allayed by any homily on morality or on the sanctifying attempts at keeping the animal passions under subjection, any more than will prayers or offerings to all the gods of Olympus restore the eunuchized, either through foolish civilized dress and customs or through excessive indulgence. We must mix medicine with our religion and make the clergy into physicians, or ordain our physicians into full-fledged clergymen.
The science of medicine, or what might be called the natural ways of nature through its physical laws, is true to itself; the fault lies in our interpretation of its phenomena, which we fail to study with sufficient discriminative precision and nicety. We have repeatedly mistaken causes and results from this want of close observance and of precision, attributing results to causes which did not exist. As an example, when the early disciples of homœopathy in ancient Palestine undertook to revive poor, old, withered King David, by putting him to bed with a young and caloric-generating Sunamite maid, when it was by like incontinent practices that he had brought himself to that state of decrepitude, it is plain that they misunderstood the principle. Boerhaave—who, as a true eclectic practitioner, followed these ancient and Biblical homœopaths in their practice in a similar case, the subject being an old Dutch burgomaster, whom he sandwiched between a couple of rosy Netherland maids—also failed to grasp the true condition of the nature of things, or the true philosophical explanation. The exhalations from the aged are by no means an elixir of health or life to the young, and the fact that the young were apt to lose health by sleeping with the aged was wrongly attributed to their loss being the others’ gain, and the result of its passing into the bodies of their aged companions, and not to its true cause,—the deteriorating influence to which they were subjected; and, further, when we analyze the subject still more, we can understand how a full-blooded and active, lithe-bodied, thin, and active-skinned Sunamite maid might and would impart caloric to King David; but, from our knowledge (not altogether practical) of the difference that exists between differently constitutioned and differently built maids in imparting caloric, and from our knowledge of the physique of the Netherland maids, who are cold and impassive, with a layer of adipose tissue that answers the same purpose as that of the blubber in the whale,—that of retaining heat and resisting cold,—we can well believe that the poor, shriveled burgomaster could receive but little heat, even when sandwiched between the two; but, on the contrary, he was, in fact, more liable to lose the little he had, unless we look at the subject in another light, and consider that sentiment that is common to both animals and men of spirit, a sentiment that has furnished the subject for more than one canvas in the hands of the true and sympathetic artist, as seen on the awakening and alert attitude of the worn-out and old decrepit war-horse, browsing in an inclosed pasture, as he hears from afar the familiar bugle-notes of his early youth, or some cavalry regiment with prancing steeds and jingling accoutrements, with bright colors and shining arms, going past the pasture, restoring for a time to the stiffening joints and dim eyes the suppleness and fire of bygone times, with visions of gallant charges and prancing reviews; or, how the same sentiment erects once more the bowed and withering frame of the old veteran, and once again fires his soul with the martial zeal of his prime as he sees the passing colors and active-stepping regiment which he followed in the bright sunshine and flush of his youth. Aside from these sentiments, which might possibly have inspired David and the Dutch burgomaster with an infusion of a new and transient good feeling, it is unquestionable but that some heated brickbats or stove-lids, curocoa jugs or old stone Burton ale-bottles filled with hot-water, would have been more effectual in imparting warmth than either Sunamite or Netherland maids.
It is hard to reconcile the beliefs of some people or nations with their manners and customs. For instance, there is the Turk; when a Jew becomes a Mohammedan he is made to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, is the expected Messiah, and that none other is to be expected; they know of Christ’s speech on the cross, made to the repentant thief; they believe in a heaven full of houris, with large black eyes and faces like the moon at its full, in which all good Moslems are to have continual rejoicings, and yet they go on performing the most barbarous and inhuman forms of castration imaginable, which not only deprives its victims of their virility, but subject more than three-fourths of those operated upon to a painful death, and the remaining to a life of continual misery. Have these poor subjects no right to future bliss, or in what shape will they reach there? If the heavens of these eunuchisers were like the heaven of Buddhism, or, as the Chinese call it, the Paradise of the West, where, although all forms of sensual gratifications are to be enjoyed, no houris are to be supplied to the saints of Buddhism,—as even the women who enter this paradise must first change their sex,—we might understand that, the genitals not being needed in the eternal world, it might be considered a matter of small moment to compel a man to go through this short and transient life without them; but where a robust condition of the sexual organs is suggested as one of the heavenly requisites, it would seem as if the Turk would look upon the suffering, misery, and death that they cause, in connection with the inhuman mutilation they inflict, with horror. Doctrinal theology, whether in the East or West, is something incomprehensible.
CHAPTER X.
Hermaphrodism and Hypospadias.
There exists a class of human beings whose description is connected with the subject of this work. They date back to mythological times, and the confusion incident to the misapplication of names and the want of proper observation on the part of the narrators has tended to carry the uncertainty of their real existence to the present day. One reason that this part of the subject would be incomplete without their description is on account of the origin of their existence being intimately connected with eunuchism, being, in fact, an outgrowth of this condition; and any history of eunuchism would be but half told, without the additional information concerning these persons.
Hermaphrodites, as stated, date back to mythology. Tradition tells us that Hermaphroditus, a son of Venus and Mercury, was educated by the Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored of him, attempted to seduce him. Hermaphroditus, like Joseph, was the pattern and mirror of continence, and would not be seduced. Talmacis then, like Potiphar’s wife, seized on the unlucky pattern of virtue, and prayed to the gods that they should so amalgamate poor Hermaphroditus to her body as to make them one. The prayer was heard on Olympus, and forthwith the two became one, but with the distinctive characteristics of each sex unchanged. Thus began that fabled race of the androgynes of the ancients. Another tradition, which is probably correct, affirms that ancient Carnia, or Halicarnassus, was in those days the Baden-Baden of Asia Minor; that thither repaired all the victims of gluttony, debauchery, and general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally “Karnassus-by-the-sea,” like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other. Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, and nervous wrecks, and the nymph who presided over the whole was Talmakis, a name derived from the salty nature of the springs which fed the baths; this nymph was worshiped as Aphrodite. Pederasty was one of the practices at these baths. From these conjoined conditions the place was said to be peopled with hermaphrodites,—meaning, at first, simply that they were under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite; and latterly the name was attached to the passive agent in the pederastic art,—a name that has followed the class and crossed the ocean into the interior wilds of America, as in Powell’s history of the manners and customs of the Omahas, an Indian tribe of the Missouri, we find that they at times practiced pederasty, the passive agent being called by the Indians an hermaphrodite, or double sexed.[38]
The relations that from eunuchism led to pederasty are very easy of explanation. Eunuchism induces an effeminate form, softer body, and prevents the growth of the beard; the voice is softer and more melodious; and their timidity renders them also more effeminate, obedient, and dependent. The peculiar commingling of the female form with that of the male furnished to the sculptors the models for those wonderfully well-made forms which are yet to be seen, representing in statuary the forms of Androgynes and Hermaphrodites; that of the favorite eunuch of the emperor Adrian being remarkable for the symmetry of its form and grace of pose.
Europe must have been astonished at the tales that were carried back by the early explorers and voyagers, in relation to the New World. The story of the immensity of the quantity of gold and silver, of great stores of hidden treasures, of the quantities of precious gems and priceless crystals was fully discounted when, from the Florida coast and the explorers of the Lower Mississippi, men returned with the tale that in the everglades and in the trackless forests, intersected by navigable sloughs, there dwelt a people half of whom were hermaphrodites. Neither the explorers nor their European historiographers seem able to have grasped the true state of affairs. Many believed in the actual existence of such numbers of these monstrosities, while others, arguing from what was then known regarding the extraordinary development of the nymphæ and clitoris, as well as of the great labia, of the women in the African regions, concluded that these supposed androgynes, or hermaphrodites, must be women, the dress assumed by these and the menial labors to which they were consigned assisting to favor this opinion. The early Franciscan missionaries to California found the men who were used for pederasty dressed as women.[39] Hammond mentions the practice as in vogue among the Indians of the southwest, which in a measure greatly resembled that of the ancient Scythians in its operation, the men being dressed as women, associating with women, and used for pederastic purposes during the orgies of their festivals. These men had previously been eunuchised by a process of continued and persistent onanism, which caused at the end a complete atrophization of the testicle.
In regard to the great number of hermaphrodites observed in Florida and on the Mississippi, the accounts are only reliable as far as they were present in female garb and in an apparent state of slavery, being compelled to do all the menial labor of the villages and camps, besides being used for pederasty, no examination having been made by any traveler. Their lot was different from those described by Hammond in his work on “Male Impotence,” where the whole transaction seems to have some sort of religious and civil significance. In Florida, however, they tilled the ground, extricated and carried off the dead during a battle, and did all the work generally, being used for beasts of burden and not allowed to cut their hair; but all authorities are silent or in complete ignorance as to whether they had suffered castration. Pere Lafiteau, however, gives an explanation which was in the last century considered ridiculous, but which, in the light that has been thrown on the existence of a former continent, and of the undisputable relation that must, some ages in the past, have existed between Phœnicia and Central America, seems a strongly probable solution of these customs. The Father accounts for the presence of these American androgynes in the following manner: The Carribeans, or Caribs, were originally a colony from Carnia; with these colonists was brought over the worship of their Pagan gods of Caria and Phrygia; these two localities were the homes of the Cybelian priesthood, who dressed in female garb, as did the sacrificial priests of the Temple of Venus Urania. It is true that the Java or Floridian priest had nothing in common with the priests of Cybele or of Venus Urania; but, still, Lafiteau gave as lucid an explanation for the existence of these conditions as any of his contemporaries. Charlevoix observed the same practices among the Illinois, which he attributed as being due to some principle of religion. The Baron de la Hontan insists that the missionary, Charlevoix, was mistaken; that the persons whom he saw in female attire, whom he took to be men, were not men. Hontan asserts that they were veritable hermaphrodites. The missionaries were, however, correct, as what has since been observed confirms their opinion. M. du Mont, who ascended the Mississippi for a distance of nine hundred leagues, also reported meeting Indians at different places attended by these petticoated androgynes.[40]
As strange as it may seem, many intelligent men were loth to part with their belief in the existence of these double-sexed individuals; the logic used by many of these insisters of hermaphrodism, although now very ridiculous, was no doubt sensible logic one hundred and fifty years ago. As a matter of curiosity, some of this reasoning will bear repeating. It is taken from a Latin edition of an ancient description of Florida, originally in the English, but translated into the Latin by the geographer, Mercator. In this book we find the roots of some of the myths that led Ponce de Leon and his steel-clad warriors to wander through Florida in a vain search of that spring or fountain of the waters of perpetual youth and of everlasting life which they were never to find. We there learn that, in the days of the good old Spanish knight, the inhabitants of Florida lived to a very old age, and that they did not marry until very late in life, as before that period it was very difficult to determine the sex of the individual.
From what has since been seen among the Indians, the probability is that these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being mentioned before circumcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals, and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were surrounded, who were, according to the Old Testament, about as an immoral, dissolute, and bestial a set as one could well imagine. Their religions were nothing but a gross mixture of stupid superstition and blind idolatry, pederasty, fornication, and general cussedness. In the then state of the Jewish nation, to have allowed them to mingle freely with these people would have ended in having the Jews adopt all their customs and habits. The aim of the Jewish leaders was to prevent any too free intercourse of their people with these nations, that they might remain uncontaminated even while dwelling near them. To accomplish this it was necessary to raise a barrier that would be the distinguishing mark of the Jewish nation. Jahns, in his learned work on the “History of the Hebrew Commonwealths,”[41] lays down the idea that circumcision, as well as many articles in their laws,—which to us appear trivial,—were in reality intended to separate the Jews farther and farther from their idolatrous, bestial, and heathenish neighbors, while at the same time these same ordinances were intended to preserve a constant knowledge of the true and only God, and maintain their moral and physical health.
Although hermaphrodism on a large scale, as an existing condition, was a matter of serious belief at the end of the eighteenth century, it has occupied no little attention in this. Courts have been called to decide on cases to invalidate marriages, or to decide the sex, more than once; and physicians are often asked the question, Do hermaphrodites really exist? Dr. Debierre, of Lyons, published in 1886 a valuable paper, entitled “Hermaphrodism Before the Civil Code: its Nature, Origin, and Social Consequences,” which was published in the Archives of Criminal Anthropology of Lyons, France. In this short but very concise treatise, Debierre gives us a complete review of the subject from mythological times to 1886. It must be quite evident to all that there exists no logical reasons why the sexual or generative organs should be exempt from, at times, being subject to variations from the normal, either through the commingling of two conceptions or of faulty development affecting other parts of the body,—conditions that go to form monstrosities. Debierre gives one peculiar case of a duplication of vagina and uterus in a girl of nineteen, the appearance of the parts and the septum between the vaginæ giving to the whole an appearance precisely similar to that of a double-barreled shot-gun. These monstrosities are as likely to happen as the different forms that affect—either by arrested development or some abnormality of excessive development—the head, which is a very prolific subject of anomalies.
Hermaphrodism is a common attribute in the vegetable kingdom, where fixed habitation or position makes such a condition necessary; it is also common to many of our lower forms of animal life, and even in the human fœtus the presence of the Wolfian bodies and the canal of Müller in the same individual attest a primitive case or condition of hermaphrodism. In other words, humanity begins its existence in a state of hermaphrodism. This condition is found up to the end of the second month of fœtal life in the human being, in common with all mammals, as well as all the vertebrates, where, however, it is subject to variations as to time of development and limit of existence in the normal condition. In the chick, it is only after the fourth day that the genital gland begins to determine whether it will turn into an ovary or a testicle; in the rabbit it is on the fifteenth day, and in the human embryo on the thirtieth day. Hermaphrodism does not occur, however, from this at first uncertain state of affairs, but rather from subsequent developments of the external organs that by their abnormality of formation simulate one or the other sex, while the internal organs may belong without any equivocation of structure to its definite sex; as it has often happened that some of these cases, having been the subject of differences of opinion among experts during life, were, after death, unanimously assigned to one sex by all of the same experts, the organs readily defining the sex being completely of the one sex. As observed by Debierre, where the subject is really a female, even where the vagina or uterus is unperceived, the presence of the menstrual function or some physical disturbance at its stated periods are sufficient evidences, as a rule, by which to determine the sex. The case of Marzo Joseph, or Josephine, reported by Crecchio in 1865, had rudiments of an hypospadic penis ten centimetres in length and a prostate of the male sex, with a vagina 6 centimetres in length and 4 in circumference, ovaries, oviducts, and uterus of the female; it was not until her death, at the age of fifty-six, that her sex was fully determined. The case reported by Sippel in 1880, supposed to be a male from external evidences, was at death found to be a female. Guttmann reported a like case in 1882. The celebrated case of Michel-Ann Dronart is remarkable; this case was declared a male by Morand Pere and a female by Burghart, as well as by Ferrein; declared asexual or neutral by the Danish surgeon, Kruger; of doubtful sex by Mertrud. The case of Marie-Madeleine Lefort, to which Debierre devotes four figures, is full of interest. One of the figures is her portrait at the age of sixteen, and another is from her photograph at the age of sixty-five. She has a man’s head in every particular of physiognomy and expression, having in the latter figure a full beard and the peculiar intellectual development of a male sage; she has the hairy breast of the man, with the mammary development of the female, and an abnormally-enlarged clitoris, which was often mistaken for the male organ. The vagina at its lower end was narrow, and the urethral aperture opened into it some distance from its outer opening; otherwise she was sexually a perfect woman, and menstruated regularly. Debierre quotes the case which Duval gives in his work on hermaphrodites, wherein a man asked for a dissolution of marriage, claiming that his wife had a male organ, which, although she was a woman in every other sense, prevented by its interference the consummation of the marriage act. The court had the case examined, when it was found that the erection of the clitoris, which was large, was enough to interfere as the husband had stated. It decreed that the young woman should have the objectionable and interfering member amputated, and on the refusal to have this done the marriage should be dissolved. She refused, and the divorce was consequently granted to the man.
From the history of Marie Lefort, it can well be conceived how the popular mind, in ignorant times, could easily be imposed upon. Montaigne relates the history of a Hungarian soldier who was confined of a well-developed infant while in camp, and of a monk brought to a successful accouchement in the cell of a convent; while Duval reports the case of a priest in Paris who was found to be pregnant with child, who was in consequence imprisoned in the prison of the ecclesiastical court. These cases were strongly females in every sense, but with some male characteristic sufficiently developed, like in the case of Marie Lefort, to allow them to believe themselves men and to pass for such.
On the other hand, males have had some female characteristics so well pronounced that they have passed for females. Debierre mentions a number of cases, to wit: Ambroise Paré reported such a case in his time; Ladowsky, of Reims, reports the case of Marie Goulich, who, up to the age of thirty-three, was believed to be a female, at which time the descent of the testicles removed all doubts as to sex. Sheghelner and Cheselden have reported analogous cases, and Girand’s case—who was happily married to a man with whom he lived until the death of the husband, in which the only female attribute was a blind vagina, which, in his case, seems to have answered all purposes—was a most remarkable case. As a rule, the cases of males who have been mistaken for hermaphrodites have been cases of hypospadic urethræ in a greater or lesser sense of deformity.
Debierre, however, mentions some cases of true hermaphrodism. He quotes a number of cases, the earliest being from the writings of Cœlius Rhodigin, who claimed to have seen in Lombardy a case in which the organs of the two sexes were side by side; Ambroise Paré records that in 1426 a pair of twins were born, joined back to back, wherein both were hermaphrodites. Among the many reporters that he quotes, he mentions Rokitansky, who reported a case in 1869, at Vienna, this being the autopsy of Hohmann, who had two ovaries and oviducts, a rudimentary uterus, and a testicle, with a sperm-duct containing spermatozoa. This individual menstruated regularly, and it is an interesting question as to what the result would have been had some of the spermatic fluid come in contact with some of the ovules that were periodically discharged. Hohmann had an imperforate penis and a bifide scrotum. Ceccherelli, who gives a more minute description of this interesting case, relates that Hohmann, who died at the age of forty, had menstruated regularly to the age of thirty-eight. The penis was imperforate but hypospadic, from whence came the urinary and spermatic discharges, and Hohmann could in turn copulate as either male or female. Odin is also quoted in relation to the case seen at the Hôtel-Dieu-de-Lyon, during the service of M. Bondet. The subject was aged sixty-three, and named Mathieu Perret. The case greatly resembled that of Hohmann, at the autopsy being found to be double sexed. So that, while most of the cases mentioned are fictitious and only apparent, the fact remains that the existence of true hermaphrodites is indisputable.[42]
If the subject of either apparently or true hermaphrodism is one of unhappiness, and oftentimes of discomfort and misery, history relates that this unfortunate class has suffered additionally, from the laws and action of ignorant and barbarian times, as such freaks of nature must of necessity have occurred at all times; only in the then ignorant state of medicine and anatomy they must have been considered as occurring much oftener—every deviation from the normal being considered as hermaphroditic. Opmeyer relates that in excavating in the neighborhood of the capitol in Rome, the laborers discovered the bronze tables on which were inscribed the twenty-two laws of Romulus, termed by many historians “The Double Decalogue of Romulus.” Article XV of this law, as well as Articles IX and X, seem to be directed against the life of these androgynes. In Roman history, however, we have an event which would seem to contradict that there existed any laws in actual force against this unfortunate class. It happened during the existence of the Punic wars, when the people were more or less laboring under fear and excitement, which would readily prepare them to accept any superstitious notion. It was during these times that three of these androgynes were known to exist in Italy. Titus Livius mentions that the existence of one of these was denounced during the consulships of C. Claudius Nero and of Marcus Livius. Etruscan soothsayers and seers were summoned to Rome, that they might consult the signs and the conditions of the constellations that accompanied the nativity of this hermaphrodite, or androgyne. These impostors, after a careful consultation of all attending circumstances, gave it as their opinion that the occurrence was an unfortunate impurity, and that it could only result to the disadvantage of Rome, unless she at once took steps to purify herself of such a monstrosity, with the conclusion that the androgyne should be first exiled from Roman soil, and then drowned in the depths of the sea. The unfortunate being was accordingly inclosed in a chest and put on board a galley, which put immediately to sea; when the vessel was out of sight of land the chest was thrown into the Mediterranean.[43]
A hermaphrodite born in Umbria during the consulship of Messalus and C. Lucinius was condemned to death, as well as was the one born at Luna during the consulship of L. Matellus and Q. Fabius Maximus. Debierre states that in the reign of Nero this barbarous custom was discontinued, as this emperor admired these freaks of nature from their novelty, as it is related that his chariot was drawn by four hermaphroditic horses.[44]
In connection with hermaphrodism it has been shown that the males who have been supposed to be so malformed were really, in most instances, but cases of hypospadias. It may not be uninteresting to observe that, while during nearly four thousand years circumcision has been practiced without the habit or condition ever having become transmissible or hereditary, hypospadias has shown a decided tendency to being transmitted. In Virchow’s Archives, Lesser reports having treated eight subjects during one generation in a family.[45] Fodéré records the case of hypospadias reported by Schweikard, in a person of forty-nine years of age, whose urethral orifice was near the junction of the penis and scrotum, but who, nevertheless, had three fine children. The same author records the remarkable case reported by Hunter to the Royal Society of London, also so deformed, who successfully impregnated his wife by receiving the spermatic fluid in a warm spoon and immediately injecting it into the vagina.[46] Another interesting case is taken from L’Union Médicale of August 26, 1856. It instances both the heredity connected with hypospadias and the peculiar circumstances under which impregnation at times takes place; it is reported by Dr. Trexel, of Kremsier, and is as follows: “On April 1, 1856, a newborn infant was brought to Dr. Trexel, that he might determine its sex. The father and mother were servants of a peasant. On an examination of the alleged father, he was found to have all the external characters of a male; the urethra, which was rather shorter than ordinary, but of large size, was imperforate; the scrotum was divided into two pouches, each containing a testicle. The apposed surfaces of the scrotal pouches were covered with a red skin, and the division extended through their entire length. At the root of the penis, in the anterior angle of these pouches, was an opening of the size of a lentil; this was the orifice of the urethra. The lower surface of the penis was grooved from the above-mentioned orifice to the end of the glans. There was no prepuce. Almost in a line behind the corona of the glans, and in the groove, were two elliptical openings, which readily admitted a large hog-bristle; there was a third smaller opening two lines from the orifice of the urethra. This man had always passed for a woman. He lay in the same room with the mother of the child; and they acknowledged having had frequent connection. The woman declared that she had had no commerce with any other man for three years, and the man did not deny this assertion. The idea of cohabitation with another man was further negatived by the circumstance that the infant had the same conformation of the genital organs as the father. How did fecundation take place? The three openings in the penis were probably the orifices of the excretory ducts of Cowper’s glands. But might not these have been the openings of the ejaculatory ducts? It is to be regretted that Dr. Trexel did not examine these canals; their length and direction would have thrown light on the subject. The fact of fecundation may also be explained by supposing that during coition the posterior wall of the vagina supplied the place of the absent floor of the urethra, thus forming a complete canal. This is the most probable explanation.”[47]
The above case, as stated, had passed for a woman; these cases are by no means such rarities. The case of Marie Dorothee, mentioned by Debierre in his work, was as peculiar. Hufeland and Marsina had pronounced Marie a woman, while Stark and Martens pronounced her a man, and Metzger could not determine on the sex. The case of Valmont, noticed by Bouillaud and Manee, is on a par with that of Giraud, in which the party was married as belonging to one sex and where it was not until after death ascertained that the person belonged to the other sex. Valmont had a hypospadic urethra and penis; a scrotum without testicles; ovaries with the Fallopian tubes; a uterus opened into a vagina of two inches in length, which, gradually narrowing, ended in the male urethra, to which was attached a prostate gland. Valmont contracted marriage as a man and was not discovered to have been a female until the autopsy revealed her to be a woman. The relation does not state anything in regard to menstruation; so that her condition in that regard is unknown.[48]
There has also been reported a number of cases in the male analogous to the double organed female mentioned by Debierre. Geoffrey St. Hilare reports a case where the penis was double, one being above the other, urine and semen flowing through both urethras. Gorè mentioned a like case to the Academy in 1844. Dr. Vanier (Du Havre) records the case reported by Huguier to the Academy, where the organs in the anatomical preparation which he exhibited were so anomalous that it was impossible to decide the sex. Aside from the medico-legal aspects that these cases present, there is an interesting Jewish theological question connected with them. The law is explicit as to circumcision; the cases presenting, if males, should be circumcised, but how to determine the sex where an autopsy alone will decide the question is not defined. It has been decided, in such cases where the presumption is that the child is of the male sex, that, like in cases of absence of prepuce, a suppositious circumcision should be performed, so that the covenant should be observed; this being in keeping with the sentiment shown by the Jews when persecuted by the Romans, or, later, by the Spaniards, who often were not able to circumcise until after death; but they never fail to comply with the covenant as far as it is possible.
Cases are liable to occur, however, which, without leaving the question as to sex in doubt, if reasoned by exclusion, would not furnish any possible opportunity for circumcision. Such a case is reported in Virchow’s Archives, vol. cxxi, No. 3; also in the British Medical Journal of December 6, 1890, and in the Satellite for January, 1891. It is one of congenital absence of penis. “Dr. Rauber records very briefly the case of a shoe-maker, aged 38, who complained of pain and trouble in the anus. On examining him, Rauber found a well-formed scrotum containing two testicles, each with a vas deferens and spermatic cord, but no trace of a penis. The urethra opened apparently into the anterior wall of the rectum. The man occasionally experienced sexual excitement, followed by an emission into the rectum. The burning pain complained of in the rectum and about the anus was due to the irritation caused by the urine. The man would not allow an ocular inspection of the interior of the rectum. Unfortunately, the details of this very rare condition are incomplete.”
It would be interesting to know where the seat of his sexual desire is situated, unless an aching testicle is such. I once knew a Spiritualist who claimed to feel the pains suffered by any friends with whom he was in sympathy; he once tried to argue with me that a certain lady patient—a warm personal friend of my questioner and a Spiritualist—had ovaritis, because he felt an intense burning pain in his right ovarian region whenever he went near to her. I tried to reason with him that that pain should be in his right testicle, but he would insist on having the sympathetic pain in his ovarian region.
CHAPTER XI.
Religio Medici.
Sir Thomas Browne, in his “Religio Medici,”[49] alludes to the scandal that is generally attached to our profession, we being accused of professing no religion. That this opinion is still prevalent at the present day is undeniable,—philosophers and physicians are believed to be atheists and non-religionists,—while, at the same time, by that strange contradiction that is so common, philosophers and physicians are the known and recognized sources of religions, such is the intimate relation existing between physical and moral hygiene. Confucius, the contemporary of Pythagoras, whose religion was said to be nothing more than the observance of a certain moral and political ethical code, and he who first formulated the text “that one should do unto others as one wishes others to do unto him,” the founder of the Confucian religion, the orthodox religion of China, was a philosopher. Buddha, the founder of the second creed recognized in China, and which forms the religion of a great part of eastern Asia, was also a philosopher who was endeavoring to reduce the Brahminical religion to the simple principles of philosophical religion, based on morality. Moses not only was the greatest philosopher of his time, but also had an insight into medicine that to us of the present day is simply incomprehensible. The Great Master was both a philosopher and a physician, his disputes with the learned and his attention to the sick having given him the titles of Great Master and Divine Healer.
To use the words of the “Religio Medici,” the great body of the medical profession can, without usurpation, assume the name of Christians; for no monk of the desert convents of Asia Minor or religious knight of the middle ages, either in their care of the sick, or giving food and shelter to the weary, or protection of sword and shield to the oppressed pilgrim plodding his way to the Holy Land, were more deserving of the name of Christian than the medical man unwearily and unselfishly practicing his profession. To the true student of his art there is that in medicine which makes of the physician a practical Christian. Nor is there aught in medicine, either in its traditions, history, study, or practice, that in the lover of his art should ever make him anything but a philosophical and practical religionist. The physician, such as is actively engaged in the daily practice of his profession, instead of having no religion, is really a practical religionist, and, although he may subscribe to no outer ceremonial form or dogma, his life is such that a Confucian, a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Hebrew can behold in him the practitioner of the essence of either of their religions,—a conception carried out by Lessing, in his play of “Nathan the Wise,” where the Jew, the Saracen, and Crusader teach the impressive lesson that nobleness is bound by no confession of faith or religion; showing the principle that should guide true religion.
The Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Boston University, has given a very interesting and intelligent relation of the connections that exist between medicine and the Old Testament, in the light of nineteenth-century science.[50] The article in question is interesting in its logical reasons as to why the Bible was inspired by a superior power, as well as in the comparisons it lays before us of the medicine of the Pagans and that of the Bible, during the early history of the world. After reviewing the false, crude, and senseless vagaries and superstitious notions that passed for medicine from the period of the Trojan war, in 1184 B.C., to the dissolution of the Pythagorean Society, 500 B.C.—periods which existed after the writing of the books of Moses,—and the period between 500 B.C. and 320 B.C., or the philosophic era of medicine, during which flourished the father of our present system of medicine, an era of advancement, but which in our eyes is still full of errors and unscientific conclusions. From these two periods we span over centuries of darkness for science and medicine to the ages of Ambroise Paré and the more modern fathers of our art, who by perseverance finally extricated medicine from the mass of magical and superstitious rubbish which, like barnacles, had clung to it during its passage through the dark and ignorant ages. After this review our author turns to the Bible and discourses in this wise:—
“Turning our attention to the Bible, we take the position that, though it was not designed to teach the science of medicine, still, whenever by hint, explicit statement, or commandment there is found in it anything relating to medicine, disease, or sanitary regulation, there must be no error; that is, provided the Bible, in an exceptional sense, is God’s book. Now, what are the facts in this case? They are these: though the Bible often speaks of disease and remedy, yet the illusions, deceptions, and gross errors of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, as formerly taught, nowhere appear upon its pages. This, it must be acknowledged, is at least singular. But more than this: the various hints and directions of the Bible, its sanitary regulations, the isolation of the sick, the washing, the sprinkling, the external applications, and the various moral and religious injunctions in their bearing upon health are confessed to be in harmony with what is most recent and approved. To be sure, the average old-school physician of a century ago would have blandly smiled at our simplicity, had it been suggested to him that his methods would be improved by following Bible hints. ‘What did Moses know about medical science?’ would have been his reply. But Moses, judged by recent standards, seems to have known much, or, at least, to have written well.”
The above statement is a truthful relation of facts, from which it can well be conceived that even in the Bible the physician finds something to inspire him with the idea of its divine inspiration, as the very history of medicine, with which it is connected, and with which he is familiar, only lends him further support in that direction. Most intelligent physicians are also lovers of philosophical history. None is more entertaining than Rawlinson, either in his “Seven Great Monarchies” or his “Ancient Egypt.” In his “Ancient Religions,” in his concluding remarks, he observes as follows, in regard to the Hebraic religion: “It seems impossible to trace back to any one fundamental conception, to any innate idea, or to any common experience or observation, the various religions which we have been considering. The veiled monotheism of Egypt, the dualism of Persia, the shamanism of Etruria, the pronounced polytheism of India are too contrariant to admit of any one explanation, or to be derivative of one single source.... It is clear that from none of the religions here treated of could the religion of the ancient Hebrews have originated. The Israelite people, at different periods of its history, came and remained for a considerable time under Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian influence, and there have not been wanting persons of ability who have regarded Judaism as a mere offshoot of the religion of one or the other of these three peoples. But, with the knowledge that we have now obtained of the religions in question, such views have been regarded as untenable, if not henceforth impossible. Judaism stands out from all other ancient religions as a thing sui generis, offering the sharpest contrast to the systems prevalent in the rest of the East, and so entirely different from them in its essence that its origin could not but have been distinct and separate.... The sacred books of the Hebrews cannot possibly have been derived from the sacred writings of any of these nations. No contrast can be greater than that between the Pentateuch and the ‘Ritual of the Dead,’ unless it be that between the Pentateuch and the Zendavesta, or between the same work and the Vedas.... In most religions the monotheistic idea is most prominent at the first, and gradually becomes obscured, and gives way before a polytheistic corruption.... Altogether, the theory to which the facts appear on the whole to point is the existence of a primitive religion, communicated to man from without, whereof monotheism and expiatory sacrifice were parts, and the gradual clouding over of this principle everywhere, unless it were among the Hebrews.”[51]
Medicine is indebted for its advancement to the Hebraic religion to a greater extent than is generally believed. In the early Christian centuries there existed three great creeds: the Christian, Hebraic, and Mohammedan. The Christian Church was in a perplexing condition. As observed by Draper,[52] it was impossible to disentangle her from the principles which had, at the beginning, entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of the human intellect. But the monk and priest were prohibited from studying medicine,[53] as by so doing the church saw that she would have to relinquish the spiritual control of disease were medicine a matter of scientific research; she preferred to hold on to her spiritual dominion, and let science slumber in darkness. On the other hand, the Mohammedans, recognizing the principle of fatalism in their religion, it was not to be expected that they should cultivate an art entirely opposed to that principle. In this state of affairs the Jewish physician, led by the teachings of his religion, alone presented the study of medicine in a scientific manner, and its practice and its result taught the Moslems that medical science placed it within the power of man to keep himself out of the grave, when either assailed by disease or laid low by the wounds of war. The Arabs were not slow to avail themselves of this discovery; and to the learning and skill of the Jewish physician, guided by the light of an intelligent Deity and a liberal religion, does medicine owe the existence of those able and learned Arabian physicians that flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
There has been more or less of fault-finding in regard to certain rules and ordinances being sacramental, which, from the nature of things, should have been merely advisory or suggestive, as they pertained more to the hygienic welfare of the people than to the spiritual. Thus to reason, is neither philosophical nor in concert with our knowledge of the structure of man, and of the intimate relations that exist between mind and body, or of good health and good morals. The writer has seen violent catharsis produced by bread pills, after podophyllin, castor-oil, and phosphate of soda in the most generous doses—administered as one would drop a letter in a mail-box—had completely failed; it is all in the manner and way we give a medicine or treat a disease. Certain narcotic and irritant poisons or powerful sedative agents have a physical action uninfluenced by the mind, but an intelligent physician is hardly supposed to drive at the small tack of disease with such powerful sledge-hammers. Charcot, recognizing the power of and availing himself of such a remedial agent as the pilgrimages to the Notre Dame de Lourdes, is an evidence of the intelligent and enlightened practitioner, who has learned, what the Bible taught, long, long ago, that human nature must be taken as it is found, and that, like the homely saying of Mohammed, as the mountain would not come to him, he must go to the mountain. Moses and all the Scriptural writers were well aware of this state of affairs, and their manner of using their knowledge was adapted and timed to the general intellectual development of the times.
There is one point in connection with the above that should not escape our attention, this being that, while the Hebraic creed and the people still subscribed to the theological doctrine of the origin of disease, in common with the religions then in vogue, here the connection stopped. All other creeds—not excepting Christianity—looked forward to a theological doctrine of the cure of disease. With the Hebrew, disease was looked upon as the result of some infraction on his part of some of the laws, and the consequent expression of displeasure on the part of the Deity. He was taught, however, that the observance of certain ordinances were both conducive to health and to the prevention of disease, and acceptable to God, as well as to rely upon his study and skill to cure disease. This was equivalent to teaching them that diseases arose from physical causes, and that physical means were to be used to combat them. From this arose the practice of exposing the sick in public places, that they might receive the benefit of the advice of such who might have had experience in a like case. It is from their religion that Hebraic medicine has received its foundation of intelligent philosophy that carried it in its purity through all ages, free from magic, superstition, and imposture. With other creeds and religions, medicine, disease, as well as the physical phenomena affecting nature, were believed to be the arbitrary expression of anger of their gods, and that the cure of disease, or alterations in physical phenomena, were to be as arbitrarily effected, regardless of the existence or action of physical laws. It is to be regretted that one of the sects which has sprung from the Hebraic creed, and which worships the same God, has been unable to emancipate itself or its people from the idea of an arbitrary theological doctrine of the origin and control of disease. It is this creation of a narrow-minded theology of a vaccilating, unintelligent, unphilosophical, and arbitrary God, who would neither respect nor regard the laws of his own creation, that has led the great body of physicians out of the modern churches. They do not deny the existence of the Deity, but the god of their conception is a higher and nobler god,—the Deity of Religio Medici.
When the prize for the best essay on “the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in creation”—a series of publications known as the Bridgewater Treatises—has been nearly every other time won by physicians, among whom we may mention Sir Charles Bell, Dr. John Kidd, Dr. Peter M. Roget, and Dr. William Prout,—not only won on their own merit, but in competition with learned theologians and noted divines,—we may truly say that physicians are by no means atheists or agnostics, but that, on the contrary, they are the real exponents of a practical and intelligent religion, which they not only practice, but fully and intelligently comprehend.
CHAPTER XII.
Hebraic Circumcision.
The first mention that we meet concerning circumcision is in Genesis. It is the command of God to Abraham; in establishing the covenant with him, He said to him: “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep between me and you, and thy seed after thee: every man-child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you” (Gen. xvii, 10, 11). It was also ordained that this should be extended to servants belonging to Abraham and his seed, as well as to their own children; and that in case of children it should be done on the eighth day after birth.[54] This was appointed as an ordinance of perpetual obligation on the Hebraic family, and its neglect or omission entailed being cut off from the people (12, 14). In compliance with this ordinance, Abraham, although in his ninety-ninth year, circumcised himself and all his slaves, as well as his son Ishmael. Slaves by purchase were circumcised,[55] as were any strangers, who were also circumcised before being allowed to partake of the passover or to become Jewish citizens. It was to be observed by all heathens who became converted to the Jewish faith. During the wanderings in the wilderness circumcision was not practiced, but Joshua caused all to be circumcised before they entered the promised land.[56]
The old Hebrews strictly followed the injunction to circumcise on the eighth day, and of such importance in a religious sense was this rite in their estimation that even when the eighth day fell on the Sabbath the eighth day ordinance was observed. The ordinance, however, was not blindly arbitrary, as rules were laid down for exception. For instance, whenever a family had lost two children through circumcision it did not become obligatory on that family to circumcise the third child, who was however considered as entitled to all the benefits of the congregation or of the Hebraic religion, just the same as if he had been circumcised. Again, Maimonides, or Moussa Ben Maimon, a celebrated physician and rabbi, born in Cordova in the year 1135 A.D., among his works on medicine, has left directions in regard to circumcision which have been the guides of the mohels. Among the Hebraic physicians it was considered that the child partook of the constitutional strength or feebleness of the mother; hence the rule above mentioned, in regard to exemption to circumcision, only was in operation when the two who had formerly died belonged to the same mother as the third one, who would thereby be exempt; but if the two children had belonged to another woman, and this third child of the father was not from the same mother, the rule did not exempt. The third child of the mother who had previously lost two infants at the rite was, however, to be circumcised when arrived at adult age, provided no further counter-indication occurred. The opinion that the mother gave the constitution to the child was promulgated by Maimonides and became general.
The eighth day is believed to refer to the eighth day after full term; thus, a child born prematurely is not supposed to be circumcised until eight days after it would have reached its full term, and only then if its general good condition is settled. Maimonides looked upon infantile jaundice, general debility, and marasmus as contra-indications to the performance of the rite; any erysipelatous inflammation, ophthalmia, anæmia, eruption of any kind, fever, tendency to convulsive movements—in fact, any observable departure from normal health should be allowed to pass before performing the rite. Aside from these general conditions that denoted that the operation was contra-indicated, the local condition of the organ itself also was to be examined, and if certain conditions existed the operation was to be put off. These conditions consisted in any irritation or red appearance of the prepuce, due to either inflammation or to the irritative action of the sebaceous matter underneath the prepuce, the acrid nature of these secretions being at times sufficiently virulent to produce an ulceration, even in the newborn.[57]
Among the Hebrews themselves there are those who do not look upon circumcision in a favorable light, but on something that has served its time in its own day, and within the past year a proselyte has been accepted into one of the New York synagogues without previous or subsequent circumcision, these reformed Jews looking upon adult circumcision as too painful an operation to be gone through, as they claim, unnecessarily. It must be said, however, that these persons look upon circumcision purely in a sacramental light, and simply as an arbitrary ordinance of God in the remote ages of antiquity, but which in the present century has not enough practical significance to warrant its performance on the occasion of an adult joining the congregation. These persons look upon it, as has been said, in a purely theological light, and ignore any and all considerations of hygiene in connection with it, claiming that if it is a simple matter of hygiene, then it is not a sacrament, and that, if it is sacramental, then the subject of hygiene has nothing whatever to do with it. The force of their reasoning and logic is very obscure and clouded, to say the least. The covenant either exists or it does not; to do away with one ordinance in any arbitrary manner is to gradually begin to crumble down the whole fabric of Judaism; for when exceptions are begun, one tenet as well as another is liable to topple over. If the rite is a sacrament, then it should be performed on all, and a proselyte should not be admitted without being circumcised, and, if a hygienic measure only, the same rule holds. These Jews evidently ignore the rationalism that governed the promulgation of the Mosaic law, and its recognition of the inseparability of the moral from the physical nature of man.
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.
It can be understood that the results of suction would be in some measure analogous to those left by the application of an Esmarch bandage on a limb. The ancients, performing the operation with rude implements and having no hæmostatic remedies or appliances, naturally followed the best means at their command; they evidently feared hæmorrhage, and their rule in regard to exemption shows us that they recognized the existence of hæmorrhagic diathesis or other transmissible peculiarities of constitution. This same fear of hæmorrhage probably suggested the second step of the operation being performed, as it is by laceration instead of by cutting instruments, showing in this an evident desire to limit the cutting part of the operation to as small a limit as possible. Against an infant who has decided hæmorrhagic tendency, we are about as helpless as were the ancient Hebrews, and, while the Turkish or some of the Arabian methods of performing the operation may be said in ordinary cases—by the application of cord and the consequent constriction—to limit the danger from subsequent hæmorrhage, still, in the hæmorrhagic diathesis this would not be of any avail; so, as already observed, we must not too rashly judge those old shepherds of the Armenian plains for adopting a practice which to them was calculated to avert subsequent dangers, or their descendants following in their footsteps, until having learned better, even if that practice is to us disgusting, primitive, and useless.
Cases occur,—happily not frequently,—of alarming and uncontrollable hæmorrhage. The following case is suggestive of the alarming extent and persistence that may attend one of those hæmorrhagic cases, even when recovery eventually takes place. It is reported by Dr. Sannanel in the Gazetta Toscana delle science medicale e fisiche of 1844. The case was that of a Jewish infant circumcised on the eighth day. Some hours after the operation the child was observed to be bleeding; the hæmmorrhage would only cease for a few moments, and then come on with increased force, and which proved rebellious to ordinary remedies. Dr. Sannanel was called during the night of the third day after the operation. A number of physicians had been in attendance, and neither ice, astringents, pressure, nor any usual hæmostatic means had had the least effect; cautery with nitrate of silver, sulphuric acid, and the actual cautery by means of heated iron were tried in succession, without any good results. Ten days passed in this manner, the hæmmorrhage only ceasing for a few moments at a time, and the child was nearly exsanguinated from the continued serous seepage and the paroxysmal hæmorrhages, when a lucky application of caustic potassa almost immediately stopped the hæmorrhage. This case was seen by nearly all the leading medical men of Leghorn, who lent their aid and counsel to save the little life. The case is interesting from the length of time it persisted, and that even after all the loss of blood and suffering that the little fellow endured he survived.[63]
Dr. Epstein, of Cincinnati, in a letter of March 29, 1872, to the Israelite of that city, mentions a nearly fatal case from hæmorrage after the rite of “Milah,” and gives the result of his experience in such cases. He argues that Hitouch or Hitooch alone, or the first step or cutting off of the prepuce, performed with ordinary care, could hardly be followed up with any more serious results than can be controlled with the application of a little acidulated water. The second act, or Periah, the act of laceration, he looks upon as one that calls for coolness, judgment, and skill, as the membrane should only be torn so far and no farther, the thin, inner fold of the prepuce being vascular only in the sulcus back of the corona and at its lower attachment, where it forms the frenum, or bridle; any carelessness or over-anxiety on the part of the operator in tearing this membrane too far back results in danger of hæmorrhage; especially is this part of the operation liable to be badly done if the inner preputial fold is thick and resisting, as in that case undue force may carry the laceration back into the vascular tissue. The means suggested by Dr. Epstein to arrest hæmorrhage are those ordinarily used in hæmorrhagic cases, such as will be given presently. The doctor regrets that the operators are not as they should be, physicians, and that, when mohels are employed, persons are not sufficiently exacting as to their qualifications.[64]
In France the government has managed to secure more safety in the operation. By a royal decree of date of May 25, 1845, in compliance with a desire expressed by the Hebrew Consistory, it was ordered that no one should exercise the functions of a mohel or of schohet, without being duly authorized to perform said functions by the Consistory of the Circonscription; and that all mohels and schohets shall be governed in the exercise of their functions by the Departmental Consistory and the General Consistory. By virtue of this decree a regulation was passed by the Consistories on the 12th of July, 1854, ordering that thereafter circumcision should only be performed in a rational manner, and by a properly qualified person. Suction was likewise abolished, and the wound directed to be sponged with wine and water. This decree and the resulting regulations have been of the greatest benefit to the French Israelites, and some attention to the matter would not be amiss in the United States.
This reformation has met with the approval of the leading French Jews, whose General Consistory decided that suction was not necessarily a part of the religious rite, and that, as it was undoubtedly introduced into the rite on the days of primitive surgery, it was perfectly rational to suppress this operative accessory, now that that same science, in its enlightenment, pronounced it unsafe. The whole body of the Congregation did not tamely submit to what they considered an innovation, and from some of the mohels all possible resistance was opposed to prevent the abolishment of this part of the operation from becoming a law. So determined was this opposition in some instances that the Consistory of Paris found it necessary to impose on all the mohels an obligation, bound by an oath, that they would respect the law. Those who refused to take the obligation gave up their vocation.
The Grand Rabbi of Paris, at the time of this reformation, M. Ennery, was one of the most zealous supporters of the new departure. The influence of the French pervaded northward, and the mezizah was abolished in Brunswick, Dr. Solomon, a learned Hebrew of that State, being instrumental in having it done legally. The discussion of this subject, in 1845, had one very happy effect,—the supporters of the reformed idea of the rite issued a circular letter to all the leading continental surgeons and medical men asking for their opinion on several points in relation thereto, especially, however, on this part of the rite. The opinions of many of these will be referred to in the medical part of this work.
The after-treatment of the circumcised infant is governed more or less by local habits and the individual intelligence of the mohel and his experience. After turning back the inner fold of the prepuce, the parts are covered with a small, square bandage, with an aperture to admit the passage of the glans. This, and the subsequent small bandage of old linen, which is calculated to hold it in place, are slightly coated with a powder composed of lycopodium, with the slight addition, at times, of Monsel’s salts, alum-powder, or some vegetable astringent. Over these another compress is placed, to prevent the friction of the clothes of the infant or of the bedding. The infant then receives a final benediction, and the godmother then receives the child in her arms and carries it to its cot or crib. The operator generally visits the infant in the afternoon of the operation, and carefully inspects the dressings, to see that no hæmorrhage has supervened.
It is customary to place the child in a bath, either the same evening or on the following morning, the object of this being to remove and to facilitate the removal of the dressings, which are more or less saturated and clotted with blood. After the removal of these, the wound is redressed, as previously, except that some cerate—ointment of roses or some other mild ointment—is used. Some prefer the simple water dressing from beginning to end. Since the introduction of creasote, acid phénique, and carbolic acid, many mohels are in the practice of washing the parts with water impregnated with one of these before performing the operation, and using subsequently the same form of lotion at every dressing. In case of hæmorrhage there is an hæmostatic water or lotion, which has been long used by the German and Polish mohels with considerable success, and which, in ordinary cases, has been found to be all that was required. This water, called by the French “Mixture d’arguesbusade,” “Eau vulneraire spiriteuse de Theden,” and by the Germans as “Spritzwasser” and “Schusswasser,” is composed as follows:—
| Acetic acid, | 10 | grammes. |
| Rectified spirits of wine, | 5 | ” |
| Diluted sulphuric acid, | 2½ | ” |
| Clarified honey, | 8 | ” |
This mixture is well mixed and filtered, and is then kept in a tightly-stoppered vial.