History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present : $b Moral and physical reasons for its performance, with a history of eunuchism, hermaphrodism, etc., and of the different operations practiced upon the prepuceRemondino, P. C. (Peter Charles)
Religion
History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present : $b Moral and physical reasons for its performance, with a history of eunuchism, hermaphrodism, etc., and of the different operations practiced upon the prepuce
Remondino, P. C. (Peter Charles)
Circumcision
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 anaemic, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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