Epispasm: Difference between revisions

}}</ref> Epispasm was popular in the First Century among [[circumcised]] Jewish men who wished to appear as [[intact]] Greek. The practice of epispasm seems to have persisted from the Second Century B. C. to the Sixth Century A. D.<ref name="hall1991">{{REFjournal

Through the development of the concept of ''lipodermos'', Greek medicine gave to Greek civilization a scientific reinforcement of its disapproval of the violations of [[genital integrity]] occurring in the Near East. This ethos posited not only that a circumcised penis is a deviation from the natural—although that is of real importance—but that a circumcised penis is a defective and disfigured penis, one that can be repaired by medical treatment. Medicine and law thereby entered into a mutually supportive relationship: circumcision was against the law because it mutilated its victims, but, taken to the next logical level in this medico-ethical argument, it was also against the law because it necessarily inflicted a state of ''lipodermos'' on its victims.<ref name="hodges2001">{{REFjournal

Hall reported that surgery was necessary for epispasm.<ref name="hall1991" />

In Greek terminology, a person who had undergone the procedure of stretching the [[Foreskin| prepuce]] was known as ''epispastikós'', the stretched one (epispasmós = pull-over). Similarly, the Romans addressed him as ''recutitio'', the reskinned (cutis = [[skin]]), not differentiating by this term whether it was done surgically or nonsurgically.<ref name="schultheiss1998" />