History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present | Page 5

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,