Athol A. W. Johnson

Athol A. W. Johnson, Esq., F.R.C.S., was a nineteenth century British doctor, surgeon, and lecturer on physiology, who advocated circumcision to prevent masturbation.

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On An Injurious Habit Occasionally Met with in Infancy and Early Childhood In cases of masturbation we must, I believe, break the habit by inducing such a condition of the parts as will cause too much local suffering to allow of the practice to be continued. For this purpose, if the prepuce is long, we may circumcise the male patient with present and probably with future advantages; the operation, too, should not be performed under chloroform, so that the pain experienced may be associated with the habit we wish to eradicate. – Athol A. W. Johnson (The Lancet, vol. 1 (7 April 1860): pp. 344-345.)

Johnson may have influenced the views of the American doctor, John Harvey Kellogg.

See also

• Pain
• United Kingdom