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The United Kingdom (UK) was the scene of early efforts to promote male circumcision. It influenced the adoption of male circumcision in other English-speaking nations. Later it was the scene of efforts to reduce and eliminate the practice.
While Jews reding in the UK practiced ritual circumcision of boys on the eighth day of life in accordance with the Abrahamic covenant, the practice was nearly unknown among gentiles.
French physician Claude-François Lallemand (1790 – 1854) recommended circumcision as a treatment for spermatorrhea (excessive, involuntary ejaculation), which was then believed to be a disease. Lallemand influenced later English physicians such as William Acton.[1]
Edward H. Dixon (1845) advocated circumcision to prevent masturbation.[2]
Sir Jonathan Hutchinson (1828 – 1913) was an English surgeon, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, pathologist and venereologist.[3] Darby describes Hutchinson as a puritanical and gloomy Quaker who disapproved of masturbation on moral grounds.[4] Sir Jonathan advocated circumcision to prevent syphilis.[5]
Nathaniel Heckford, a pediatrician at the East London Hospital for Children, wrote Circumcision as a Remedial Measure in Certain Cases of Epilepsy, Chorea, etc. (1865), in which he argued that circumcision acted as an effective remedial measure in the prevention of certain cases of epilepsy and chorea.[6]
Sir Jonathan Hutchinson started to promote circumcision to prevent masturbation in 1890.
Sir Frederick Treves (1853 – 1923), a prominent Harley Street surgeon, wrote an operative manual in 1903 to educate other surgeons in the performance of the circumcision amputation.[7]
References
- ↑
Darby, Robert. Pathologizing Male Sexuality: Lallemand, Spermatorrhea, and the Rise of Circumcision. J Hist Med Allied Sci. July 2005; 60(3): 283-319. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
- ↑
Dixon, Edward H. (1845): A Treatise on Diseases of the Sexual Organs. New York: Stringer & Co. Pp. 158-165. Retrieved 9 June 2011.
- ↑
Zhang, Gary (2020). Jonathan Hutchinson
, Life in the Fast Lane. Retrieved 4 September 2021. - ↑ Darby, Robert.
The crotchets of Sir Jonathan Hutchinson
, The History of Circumcision. Retrieved 4 September 2021. - ↑ Hutchinson, Jonathon. On the Influence of Circumcision in Preventing Syphilis. Medical Times and Gazette. 1855; 32(844): 542-543. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
- ↑ Heckford N. Circumcision as a remedial measure in certain cases of epilepsy and chorea. Clinical Lectures and Reports by the Medical and Surgical Staff of the London Hospital. 1865; 2: 58-64.
- ↑ Treves, Frederick (1903):
Chapter VI
, in: Circumcision. Work: A Manual of Operative Surgery, II.. London: Cassell. Pp. 670-3. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
