History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present | Page 6

regions of Kurdistan, something over six thousand years ago, the fathers of the Hebrew race, inspired by a wisdom that could be nothing less than of divine origin, forestalled the process of evolution by establishing the rite of circumcision. Whether this has been beneficial or injurious to the race will be, in a measure, the object of the discussion in this book.
One object of this book is to furnish my professional brothers with some embodied facts that they may use in convincing the laity in many cases where they themselves are convinced that circumcision is absolutely necessary; but, having nothing in their text-books to back up their opinion with, their explanations are too apt to pass for their mere unfounded personal view of the matter. If the patient, or the parents of the patient, ask the physician for his authority, he is at a loss, as there is nothing that deals with the subject in any extended manner; so that this book has been written in as plain English as the subject-matter could possibly allow, so that non-professionals could easily read and understand it. I have often felt the need of such a work; people can understand emergency or accident surgery, military surgery, or reparative surgery, but such a thing as surgery to remedy a seemingly medical disease, or what might be called the preventive practice of surgery, is something they cannot understand. First, and not the least, among the incentives to skepticism on this subject is the unwelcome fact of a surgical operation, which, no matter how trivial it may seem to the surgeon, is a matter of considerable magnitude to the patient, his parents, or friends; there are risks, pain, worry, annoyances, and expenses to be undergone,--considerations which, either singly or unitedly, often lead one to reason against the operation, even when otherwise convinced of its need or utility.
The hardest to convince are those, however, who insist on having a four-and-a-half-foot-gauge fact driven through their two-foot-gated understanding, without it ever occurring to them that the gate, and not the fact, is the faulty article, Some of these gentry are very unconvincible. They at times remind one of that description given by Carlyle in regard to one of the Georges, who found himself, when Prince of Wales, leading an army in Flanders, and actually engaged in a battle. His Royal Highness was on foot, and was seen standing facing the enemy, with outstretched legs, like a Colossus of Rhodes, impassive and stolid,--the very impersonification of Dutch courage and aggressiveness. There he stood, unconscious whether he was at the head of an army or single attendant; he might be overridden and annihilated, overturned and expunged, but there he would most assuredly stand and fall, if need be; overwhelming squadrons, by their impetus and weight, might ride him down and crush him; but one thing was most certain, this certain fact being that he never could be made to retreat or advance, as no impression from front or rear could convince him of the necessity of either.
Then, there is our statistical friend, who cannot discriminate between the exception and the rule by any common-sense deductions. He must have all the authentic, carefully-compiled statistics before he can allow himself to form any opinion. As long as there is the smallest fraction of a decimal unaccounted for in a mathematical way, this individual is inconvincible. These men pride themselves upon being methodically exact; they express their willingness to be convinced if you can present acceptable proofs; but, trying to present simple rational proofs to these individuals is considerably like presenting a meal of boiled pork and cabbage to a confirmed and hypochondriacal dyspeptic,--it only increases their mental dyspepsia.
Had Columbus waited to discover America, or had Galileo waited to proclaim the motion of the earth, until authorized to a serious consideration of the matter by properly-tabled statistics, they would have waited a long, long time; and, it may be added, the inconveniences that attend the proving of a negative will so interfere with the proper arrangement of statistical matter which relates to the prepuce and circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary preputial extinction will take place,--probably contemporary with the existence of Bulwer's "Coming Race,"--but not at a too remote period for the proper and satisfactory tabulation of the statistics.
The ideas of the etiology and pathological processes through which we journey,--from a condition of health and good feeling to one of disease, miserable feeling, and death,--as described in, or rather as they control the sentiment and policy of, this work, are such as have been followed by Hutchinson, Fothergill, Beale,