But just as this removal of a part of the prepuce, and the consequent increased possibilities of cleanliness of the _glans_, more or less counteracted the injurious effects of Climate tending to set up diseases of the _glans penis_ in general, it must have equally exercised as against possible affections of this part resulting from coition a certain prophylactic influence,—though undoubtedly this was not _so_ great as it has been in some quarters represented to be, as we intend to explain more fully elsewhere. Hence to some extent, but only to a limited extent, can the practice of circumcision be regarded as a proof of the existence of Venereal disease in Antiquity; but at the same time to refer it to this as _sole_ motive, as _Stoll_[233] does, is quite inadmissible. What has here been said of _the Circumcision of men_, holds good also in the main of _that of maids and women_. This consists in the removal of the _praeputium clitoridis_; but neither the amputation of the Clitoris itself in so-called _Tribads_ must be confounded with it, nor yet the operation on the exaggerated nymphae or inner _labia_, of women. The Arabs, among whom this practice,—female circumcision,—is especially rife at the present day as it was of old,[234] call the part that is subjected to circumcision نوي (_nava_), the circumcision itself خفض (_battar_) or خفض (_chaphad_), and what is cut away in circumcision بظر (_bätr_). Usually the circumcision of maids is first performed on the completion of the tenth year by women who make it their special business and who are known as مبظّرة (_mobatterat_). These women perambulate the streets and openly call out, “Any maids to circumcise?”[235] Besides the Arabs, Circumcision of maids is to be found among the Copts or modern Egyptians,[236] the Ethiopians,[237] in some districts of Persia,[238] among the Negroes in Bambuk[239] and the Panos in the province of Maynas in South America, the latter actually restricting the practice to the women.[240] Baths and Bathing. § 37. In spite of all precautions adopted it was impossible to keep away everything unclean from the body, while this latter by its own excrements was constantly making itself more or less unclean;[241] hence it was only natural that from the most primitive times men’s attention was directed towards means of removing the uncleanliness so contracted. But the defilement was never more than an external one; it concerned merely the skin and the orifices of the mucous membrane, while the matter requiring removal was of a sort soluble in water, and thus water was always the chief and foremost means employed to secure cleanliness. Doctrines of Cosmogony further confirmed the practice; these made water the origin of all things, a direct effluence of the deity and therefore itself divine,—a means not only of purification, but of sanctification as well. Θάλασσα κλύζει πάντα τἀνθρώπων κακά,