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A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain
In the eighteenth century, the Western world viewed circumcision as an embarrassing disfigurement peculiar to Jews. A century later, British doctors urged parents to circumcise their sons as a routine precaution against every imaginable sexual dysfunction, from syphilis and phimosis to masturbation and bed-wetting. Thirty years later the procedure again came under hostile scrutiny, culminating in its disappearance during the 1960s.
Why Britain adopted a practice it had traditionally abhorred and then abandoned it after only two generations is the subject of A Surgical Temptation . Robert Darby reveals that circumcision has always been related to the question of how to control male sexuality. This study explores the process by which the male genitals, and the foreskin especially, were pathologized, while offering glimpses into the lives of such figures as James Boswell, John Maynard Keynes, and W. H. Auden. Examining the development of knowledge about genital anatomy, concepts of health, sexual morality, the rise of the medical profession, and the nature of disease, Darby shows how these factors transformed attitudes toward the male body and its management and played a vital role in the emergence of modern medicine.
Why Britain adopted a practice it had traditionally abhorred and then abandoned it after only two generations is the subject of A Surgical Temptation . Robert Darby reveals that circumcision has always been related to the question of how to control male sexuality. This study explores the process by which the male genitals, and the foreskin especially, were pathologized, while offering glimpses into the lives of such figures as James Boswell, John Maynard Keynes, and W. H. Auden. Examining the development of knowledge about genital anatomy, concepts of health, sexual morality, the rise of the medical profession, and the nature of disease, Darby shows how these factors transformed attitudes toward the male body and its management and played a vital role in the emergence of modern medicine.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 3, 2020
This book was painful to read, not because it was dense (though it is fairly dense and quite detailed), but because its subject matter is a topic that is deeply triggering for me as a victim of infant circumcision in the US, which picked up its practice of infant circumcision from the British and from the same cultural forces that led to it in Britain, but where the practice never died out.
I learned a lot about the history of 19th Century medicine and the development of a number of fad quack surgical practices due to the fact that anesthetics and antiseptic technique made routine surgery practical a generation before doctors had either a particularly clear understanding of the germ theory of disease or effective drug-based therapies. This fad, along with pre-germ-theory medical ideas, such as the "nerve force" theory that was the basis for the belief that masturbation could cause blindness or other nervous system issues, played a significant role in the spread of medicalized circumcision.
I do wish Darby discussed at more length how routine circumcision managed to die out in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but what he does have to say on this topic was quite interesting, because it contradicted the one explanation I'd heard in the past: that universal, government-subsidized healthcare meant there was a political interest in stopping paying for and performing a pointless surgery.
Darby contends that the elimination of routine circumcision in the UK was eased by the fact that it primarily only became common among the upper classes--who could afford the level of medical care that resulted in it--and did not persist so long that society and the medical community entirely forgot how the natural penis worked. It did become common across class lines in the colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but their greater connections to the British medical community meant that the British rejection of the practice had more influence there than in the US.
In any case, it seems that in all cases where routine medicalized circumcision was adopted and then rejected, the rejection was led by the medical community rather than by parents, which--given how stridently pro-genital-mutilation the American medical community continues to be--makes it hard for me to have much hope that there will be improvement here any time soon.
I learned a lot about the history of 19th Century medicine and the development of a number of fad quack surgical practices due to the fact that anesthetics and antiseptic technique made routine surgery practical a generation before doctors had either a particularly clear understanding of the germ theory of disease or effective drug-based therapies. This fad, along with pre-germ-theory medical ideas, such as the "nerve force" theory that was the basis for the belief that masturbation could cause blindness or other nervous system issues, played a significant role in the spread of medicalized circumcision.
I do wish Darby discussed at more length how routine circumcision managed to die out in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but what he does have to say on this topic was quite interesting, because it contradicted the one explanation I'd heard in the past: that universal, government-subsidized healthcare meant there was a political interest in stopping paying for and performing a pointless surgery.
Darby contends that the elimination of routine circumcision in the UK was eased by the fact that it primarily only became common among the upper classes--who could afford the level of medical care that resulted in it--and did not persist so long that society and the medical community entirely forgot how the natural penis worked. It did become common across class lines in the colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but their greater connections to the British medical community meant that the British rejection of the practice had more influence there than in the US.
In any case, it seems that in all cases where routine medicalized circumcision was adopted and then rejected, the rejection was led by the medical community rather than by parents, which--given how stridently pro-genital-mutilation the American medical community continues to be--makes it hard for me to have much hope that there will be improvement here any time soon.
November 6, 2018
A very dense, but very complete review of the tragedy that is circumcision in the modern Western world.
Want to read
November 17, 2013It's my turn to have authoritative information on the penis, foreskin and circumcision.
My thanks to Jackson for recommending this book. It's on my BOLO list.
My thanks to Jackson for recommending this book. It's on my BOLO list.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews