Alleged Benefits of Circumcision

 

Now I would like to list some of the alleged benefits and related reasoning:

 

·       Historically, during the 18th and 19th centuries, circumcision was propagated as the remedy of almost all known ailments such as impotence, sterility, priapism, masturbation, venereal disease, epilepsy, bed-wetting, night terrors, paralysis, and homosexuality. It was also employed as a prophylactic measure against tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, polio, idiocy, and forgetfulness


Three illustration from The Silent Friend by R. & L. Perry & Co. (1853) showing (left to right) the ‘General appearance of the features through Onanism’, ‘The meagre appearance of the features through Onanism’, and, ‘Spermatorrheal Opthalmia [inflammation of the eye] consequent through Onanism’.

·       Penile cancer was literally nonexistent in circumcised men based on a survey conducted in USA of 1250 large general hospitals in 1932 by Wolbarst

·       Walsham (1903) re-iterates the putative association of phimosis with impotence and suggests that it may also predispose to sterility, priapism, excess masturbation and even venereal disease.

·       Warren (1915) adds epilepsy, nocturnal enuresis, night terrors and ‘precocious sexual unrest’ to the list of dangers, and this accepted catalogue of `phimotic ills' is extended in American textbooks to include other aspects of `sexual erethism' such as homosexuality

·       In the 19th century, during the Victorian era of medical experimentation in the United States and English-speaking countries, circumcision was promoted as preventing masturbation in boys and as a “cure” for “hysteria” in women. Some Victorian doctors went beyond the masturbation argument – claiming that circumcision prevented or cured conditions ranging from syphilis to epilepsy to mental retardation.

·       Virtually all medical texts at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century prescribed circumcision for a variety of ills, ranging from epilepsy and hydrocephalus to malnutrition and tuberculosis, and confidently asserted that it was a cure for the "disease" of masturbation

·       Following Spitz and Hare, Comfort observed that punitive treatments for the vice introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century included chastity belts and genital infibulation for both sexes, and spiked collars to wrap around the penis of boys afflicted by nocturnal emissions, as recommended by J.L. Milton in his much-reprinted book on Spermatorrhoea (condition of excessive, involuntary ejaculation)

·       Some countries (e.g., US, Britain, South Korea) favored male circumcision due to the assumed health benefit. Britain abandoned the practice in the early 1950s, New Zealand in the 1960s, and Australia and Canada from the 1970s)


Die Frau als Hausärztin – Ein ärztliches Nachschlagebuch für die Frau, by Dr. med. Anna Fischer Dückelmann, Copyright 1911, Prevention of Onanism, Link: https://archive.org/details/diefraualshaus00fiscuoft/mode/2up?view=theater




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