Circumcision

Circumcision is the removal of some or all of the foreskin (prepuce). The frenulum may also be removed at the same time, in a procedure called frenectomy. The word circumcision comes from Latin circum (meaning "around") and caedere (meaning "to cut"). Female circumcision is a term applied to a variety of procedures performed on the female genitalia. Except where specified, "circumcision" in this article should be taken as "male circumcision". Some opponents of this practice use the term male genital mutilation (MGM).

History of circumcision

Main article: History of male circumcision

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It has been variously proposed that circumcision began as a religious sacrifice, as a rite of passage marking a boy's entrance into adulthood, as a form of sympathetic magic to ensure virility, as a means of suppressing (or enhancing) sexual pleasure, as an aid to hygiene where regular bathing was impractical, as a means of marking those of lower (or higher) social status, as a means of differentiating a circumcising group from their non-circumcising neighbors, as a means of discouraging masturbation or other socially proscribed sexual behaviors, to increase a man's attractiveness to women, as a symbolic castration, as a demonstration of one's ability to endure pain, or as a male counterpart to menstruation or the breaking of the hymen. It is possible that circumcision arose independently in different cultures for different reasons.

Related Topics:
Sacrifice - Rite of passage - Sympathetic magic - Hygiene - Bathing - Masturbation - Castration - Menstruation - Hymen

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Circumcision in the Ancient World

The oldest documentary evidence for circumcision comes from Egypt. Tomb artwork from the Sixth Dynasty (2345 - 2181 BC) shows men with circumcised penises, and one relief from this period shows the rite being performed on a standing adult male. The Egyptian hieroglyph for "penis" depicts either a circumcised or an erect organ. The examination of Egyptian mummies has found some with foreskins and others who were circumcised.

Related Topics:
Egypt - Sixth Dynasty - Relief - Egyptian hieroglyph

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Circumcision was common, although not universal, among ancient Semitic peoples. The Book of Jeremiah, written in the sixth century BC, lists the Egyptians, Jews, Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites as circumcising people. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, would add the Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, and Syrians to that list.

Related Topics:
Semitic - Book of Jeremiah - Sixth century BC - Edomites - Ammonites - Moabites - Herodotus - Fifth century BC - Colchians - Ethiopia - Phoenicians - Syria

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Except in the portrayal of satyrs, lechers, and barbarians, ancient Greece artwork portrayed penises with foreskins. In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's conquests, Greek dislike of circumcision led to a decline in its incidence among many peoples that had previously practiced it. The writer of 1 Maccabees wrote that under the Seleucids, many Jewish men attempted to hide or reverse their circumcision so they could exercise in Greek gymnasia.

Related Topics:
Satyr - Barbarian - Ancient Greece - Alexander the Great - 1 Maccabees - Seleucid - Gymnasia

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One example of pressure to circumcize in the Hellenistic world was when the Judean king John Hyrcanus conquered the Idumeans. He forced them to become circumcised and convert to Judaism, but their ancestors the Edomites had practiced circumcision in pre-Hellenistic times.

Related Topics:
Hellenistic - John Hyrcanus - Idumea

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Circumcision in the Greco-Roman World

According to Hodges, ancient Greek aesthetics of the human form considered circumcision a mutilation of a previously perfectly shaped organ. Greek artwork of the period portrayed penises as covered by the foreskin (sometimes in exquisite detail), except in the portrayal of satyrs, lechers, and barbarians.http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/

Related Topics:
Aesthetics - Satyr - Barbarian

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This dislike of the appearance of the circumcised penis led to a decline in the incidence of circumcision among many peoples that had previously practiced it throughout Hellenistic times. In Egypt, only the priestly caste retained circumcision, and by the second century, the only circumcising groups in the Roman Empire were Jews and Proselytes, Egyptian priests, and the Nabatean Arabs. Circumcision was sufficiently rare among non-Jews that being circumcised was considered conclusive evidence of Judaism (or early Christianity and others derogatively called Judaizers) in Roman courts—Suetonius in Domitian 12.2 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/suet-domitian-rolfe.html described a court proceeding in which a ninety-year-old man was stripped naked before the court to determine whether he was evading the head tax placed on Jews and Judaizers. The first-century Alexandrian Apion denounced circumcision as a barbaric custom in his diatribe against the Jews, notwithstanding that it was still practised among the Egyptian priestly caste.

Related Topics:
Hellenistic - Roman Empire - Jews - Proselytes - Nabatea - Judaism - Judaizers - Suetonius - Head tax - Alexandria - Apion

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Roman satirists including Horace and Juvenal equated the exposure of the glans that results from circumcision to its exposure during erection, and they caricatured Jewish men as being lustful or lecherous, sometimes in an incestuous or homosexual sense, often implying that Jewish men had unusually large penises and were of great sexual potency.

Related Topics:
Satirists - Horace - Juvenal - Erection - Caricature - Lecher - Incest - Homosexual

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Techniques for restoring the appeareance of a foreskin were known by the 2nd century B.C. In one such technique, a copper weight (called the Judeum pondum) was hung from the remnants of the circumcised foreskin until, in time, they became sufficiently stretched to cover the glans. The first-century writer Celsus described two surgical techniques for foreskin restoration in his medical treatise De Medicina. http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/rubin/ In one of these, the skin of the penile shaft was loosened by cutting in around the base of the glans. The skin was then stretched over the glans and allowed to heal, giving the appearance of an uncircumcised penis. Jewish religious writers denounced such practices as abrogating the covenant of Abraham in 1 Maccabees and the Talmud http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/hall1/. Because of these attempts, and for other reasons, the Pharisees, ca. 100, added two more steps to the Biblical rite of circumcision:

Related Topics:
Celsus - Foreskin restoration - Covenant - Abraham - 1 Maccabees - Talmud - Pharisees

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:* Brit Peri'ah, which went beyond the relatively simple and Biblical trimming of excess foreskin, and stripped the mucosal lining of the foreskin back to the coronal sulcus.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:* Brit Mezizah, by which the trained rabbi ("mohel") fills his mouth with wine and sucks the wound made by the circumcision, repeating the process a few times

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Circumcision was an important issue for first century Jews and Christians. Flavius Josephus in Jewish Antiquities book 20 http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/josephus/ant-20.htm, chapter 2 recorded the story of King Izates who decided to follow the Law of Moses at the advice of a Jewish merchant named Ananias. He was going to get circumcised, but his mother, Helen, who herself embraced the Jewish customs, advised against it on the grounds that the subjects wouldn't stand to be ruled by someone who followed such "strange and foreign rites". Ananias likewise advised against it, on the grounds that worship of God was superior to circumcision (Robert Eisenman in James the Brother of Jesus claims that Ananias is Paul of Tarsus who held similar views) and that God would forgive him for fear of his subjects. So Izates decided against it. However, later, "a certain other Jew that came out of Galilee, whose name was Eleazar", who was well versed in the Law, convinced him that he should, on the grounds that it was one thing to read the Law and another thing to practice it, and so he did. Once Helen and Ananias found out, they were struck by great fear of the possible consequences, but as Josephus put it, God looked after Izates. As his reign was peaceful and blessed, Helen visited the Jerusalem Temple to thank God, and since there was a terrible famine at the time, she brought lots of food and aid to the people of Jerusalem.

Related Topics:
Flavius Josephus - Law of Moses - Paul of Tarsus

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was also division in Pharisaic Judaism between Hillel the Elder and Shammai on the issue of circumcision of proselytes.

Related Topics:
Pharisaic Judaism - Hillel the Elder - Shammai - Proselytes

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts of the Apostles 15 addressed the issue of whether circumcision was required of new converts. Both Simon Peter and James the Just spoke against requiring circumcision in Gentile converts and the Council ruled that circumcision was not necessary. However, Acts 16 and many references in the letters of Paul of Tarsus show that the practice was not immediately eliminated. Paul, who was said to be directly responsible for one man's circumcision in Acts 16:1-3 and who appeared to praise Jewish circumcision in Romans 3:2, said that circumcision didn't matter in 1 Corinthians 7:19 and then increasingly turned against the practice, accusing those who promoted circumcision of wanting to make a good showing in the flesh and boasting or glorying in the flesh in Galatians 6:11-13. In a later letter, Philippians 3:2, he is repored as warning Christians to beware the "mutilation". Circumcision was so closely associated with Jewish men that Jewish Christians were referred to as "those of the circumcision" (e.g. Colossians 3:20) http://www.cirp.org/pages/cultural/glass1/ or conversely Christians who were circumcised were refered to as Jewish Christians or Judaizers.

Related Topics:
Council of Jerusalem - Acts of the Apostles - Simon Peter - James the Just - Paul of Tarsus - Jewish Christians - Judaizers

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Gospel of Thomas saying 53, said to be of Jesus, states:

Related Topics:
Gospel of Thomas - Jesus

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:"His disciples said to him, "is circumcision useful or not?" He said to them, "If it were useful, their father would produce children already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become profitable in every respect."" SV http://www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/Trans.htm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Parallels to Thomas 53 are found in Paul's Romans 2:29, Philemon 3:3, 1 Corinthians 7:19, Galatians 6:15, Colossians 2:11-12.

Related Topics:
Romans - Philemon - 1 Corinthians - Galatians - Colossians

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Medical circumcision in the 19th century

Until 1870, medical circumcisions were performed to treat conditions local to the penis: phimosis, balanitis, and penile cancer. In that year, Lewis Sayre, a prominent New York orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the newly-formed American Medical Association, examined a five-year-old boy who was unable to straighten his legs, and whose condition had so far defied treatment. Upon noting that the boy's genitals were inflamed, Sayre hypothesized that chronic irritation of the boy's foreskin had paralyzed his knees via reflex neurosis. Sayre circumcised the boy, and within a few weeks, he recovered from his paralysis. After several additional incidents in which circumcision also appeared effective in treating paralyzed joints, Sayre began to promote circumcision as a powerful orthopedic remedy.

Related Topics:
Lewis Sayre - New York - Orthopedic surgeon - American Medical Association - Reflex neurosis

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sayre's prominence within the medical profession allowed him to reach a wide audience. He lectured widely in the United States and the United Kingdom, and his ideas influenced physicians throughout the English-speaking world. As more practitioners tried circumcision as a treatment for otherwise intractable medical conditions, sometimes achieving positive results, the list of ailments reputed to be treatable through circumcision grew. By the 1890s, hernia, bladder infections, kidney stones, insomnia, chronic indigestion, rheumatism, epilepsy, asthma, bedwetting, Bright's disease, erectile dysfunction, syphilis, insanity, and skin cancer had all been linked to the foreskin, and many physicians advocated universal circumcision as a preventive health measure.

Related Topics:
Hernia - Bladder - Kidney stone - Insomnia - Rheumatism - Epilepsy - Asthma - Bedwetting - Bright's disease - Erectile dysfunction - Syphilis - Insanity - Skin cancer

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Specific medical arguments aside, several hypotheses have been raised in explaining the American public's acceptance of infant circumcision as preventive medicine. The success of the germ theory of disease had not only enabled physicians to combat many of the postoperative complications of surgery, but had made the wider public deeply suspicious of dirt and bodily secretions. Accordingly, the smegma that collects under the foreskin was viewed as unhealthy, and circumcision readily accepted as good penile hygiene.http://www.cirp.org/library/history/gollaher/ Secondly, moral sentiment of the day regarded masturbation as not only sinful, but also physically and mentally unhealthy, stimulating the foreskin to produce the host of maladies of which it was suspected. In this climate, circumcision could be employed as a means of discouraging masturbation.http://www.noharmm.org/paige.htm All About the Baby, a popular parenting book of the 1890s, recommended infant circumcision for precisely this purpose. Ironically, a 1410-man survey in the United States in 1992, Laumann found that circumcised men were more likely to report masturbating at least once a month (though the 47% rate for circumcised men and 34% rate for uncircumcised men are both low enough that it's clear that the only difference revealed was in admitting to masturbating. Any difference in actual frequency of masturbation remains unknown.) Thirdly, with the proliferation of hospitals in urban areas, childbirth, at least among the upper and middle classes, was increasingly undertaken in the care of a physician in a hospital rather than that of a midwife in the home. It has been suggested that once a critical mass of infants were being circumcised in the hospital, circumcision became a class marker of those wealthy enough to afford a hospital birth.http://www.cirp.org/library/legal/USA/waldeck1/

Related Topics:
Germ theory of disease - Smegma - Masturbation - Sin - Hospital - Childbirth - Midwife

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

During the same time period, circumcision was becoming easier to perform. William Halstead's 1885 discovery of hypodermic cocaine as a local anaesthetic made it easier for doctors without expertise in the use of chloroform and other general anaesthetics to perform minor surgeries. Also, several mechanically-aided circumcision techniques, forerunners of modern clamp-based circumcision methods, were first published in the medical literature of the 1890s, allowing surgeons to perform circumcisions more safely and successfully.

Related Topics:
William Halstead - 1885 - Cocaine - Chloroform

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the 1920s, advances in the understanding of disease had undermined much of the original medical basis for preventive circumcision. Doctors continued to promote it, however, as good penile hygiene and as a preventive for a handful of conditions local to the penis: balanitis, phimosis, and penile cancer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Routine infant circumcision was taken up in the English-speaking parts of Canada, the United States and Australia, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Although it is difficult to determine historical circumcision rates, one estimatehttp://www.boystoo.com/history/statistics.htm of infant circumcision rates in the United States holds that 30% of newborn American boys were being circumcised in 1900, 55% in 1925, and 72% in 1950.

Related Topics:
Canada - United States - Australia - New Zealand - United Kingdom

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Circumcision since 1950

In 1949, a lack of consensus in the medical community as to whether circumcision carried with it any notable health benefit motivated the United Kingdom's newly-formed National Health Service to remove routine infant circumcision from its list of covered services. One factor in this rejection of circumcision may have been Douglas Gardiner's famous paper, 'The fate of the foreskin' which revealed that for the years 1942–1947, about 16 children per year had died because of circumcision in England and Wales.http://www.cirp.org/library/general/gairdner/ Since then, circumcision has been an out-of-pocket cost to parents, and the proportion of newborns circumcised in England and Wales has fallen to less than one percent.

Related Topics:
1949 - National Health Service

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Canada, individual provincial health services began delisting circumcision in the 1980s. At present, only Manitoba pays for the procedure. The infant circumcision rate in Canada has fallen from roughly half in the 1970s to its present value of 13%, albeit with strong regional variations.http://www.courtchallenge.com/refs/yr99p-e.html

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In South Korea, circumcision was largely unknown before the establishment of the United States trusteeship in 1945 and the spread of American influence. More than 90% of South Korean high school boys are now circumcised, but the average age of circumcision is 12 years http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/pang1/.

Related Topics:
South Korea - 1945

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In South Africa circumcision has roots in several belief systems and is performed much of the time to teen aged males : "...The young men in the eastern Cape belong to the Xhosa ethnic group for whom circumcision is considered part of the passage into manhood... A law was recently introduced requiring initiation schools to be licensed and only allowing circumcisions to be performed on youths aged 18 and older. But Eastern Cape provincial Health Department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo told Reuters news agency that boys as young as 11 had died. Each year thousands of young men go into the bush alone, without water, to attend initiation schools. Many do not survive the ordeal..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3069491.stm.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the United States, it is unclear whether circumcision rates are rising or falling. A recent study found that circumcision rates had significantly increased since 1988.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15711354 However, statistics collected by the National Center for Health Statistics show that the overall rate of neonatal circumcision has gone down recently, and has fallen from 64% in 1979 to 60% in 2002.http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_13/sr13_158.pdf Strong regional differences in the circumcision rates have developed during this time. While almost 80% of newborn boys are circumcised in the Midwest and South, circumcision rates have declined to only 31.4% in 2003 in the West http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/circumcisions/circumcisions_region.htm. This has been attributed in part to increasing births among Latin Americans, who usually do not circumcise http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/circumcisions/circumcisions.htm. As of August 2005, 16 states have abolished payment for the procedure under Medicaid; 34 states still allow circumcision to be funded with taxpayers' money (see map).

Related Topics:
Midwest - Latin American - Medicaid

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The major medical societies in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand do not support routine non-therapeutic infant circumcision. Major medical organizations in the United States state that parents should decide what is in their child's best interests, declining to make a recommendation one way or another. Neonatal circumcision remains the most common pediatric operation carried out in the U.S. today.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~