History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present | Page 6

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