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'''Lipodermos''' (λιποδερμος, lit. "lacking skin") is an ancient Greek medical disease concept which describes a penis with little or no foreskin. <ref name="hodges2001">{{REFjournal |last=Hodges |init=FM |author-link=Frederick M. [Hodges |url=http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/ |title=The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and Their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesme]. '' |journal=Bull. Hist. Med.,'' |date=2001 Fall; -09 |volume=75( |issue=3): |page=375.}}</ref><ref>Pseudo-Galen, but presented as Galen in ''Definitiones medicae'' 164, in Kühn, MG (n. 9), 19: 445. See Jutta Kollesch, ''Untersuchungen zu den pseudogalenischen Definitiones Medicae'' (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973).</ref> The Greeks valued a longer prepuce, and pathologized the state of having a deficient prepuce, especially one that has been surgically ablated (i.e. circumcised).<ref name="hodges2001" /> It must be remembered that this medical conceptualization happened in the historical context of the legal efforts to abolish ritual circumcision throughout the Seleucid and Roman empires.<ref name="hodges2001" />

The surgical techniques developed in antiquity to repair the lipodermic penis have been described in modern medical journals,<ref>{{REFjournal |last=Rubin |first=Jody P. Rubin, "[ |init=JP |url=http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/rubin/ |title=Celsus' Decircumcision Operation: Medical and Historical Implications]," '' |journal=Urology'', |date=1980, '' |volume=16'': 121–24 |pages=121–4}}</ref> <ref name="schultheiss1998">{{REFjournal |last=Schultheiss |first=Dirk Schultheiss et al.,"[ |init=D |etal=yes |url=http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/schultheiss/ |title=Uncircumcision: A Historical Review of Preputial Restoration]," '' |journal=Plast. & Reconstruct. Surg''., |date=1998, '' |volume=101'': 1990–98. |pages=1990–8}}</ref> but these papers erroneously portray these operations as having the sole objective of surgically repairing the circumcised penis rather than the lipodermic penis, which, as the ancient sources show, need not necessarily have been caused by circumcision. For instance, Celsus prefaces his account of his surgical technique by specifying that it is to treat "those in whom the defect is natural,"<ref>Celsus, De medicina 7.25.1 (Spencer [n. 21], 3: 421).</ref> rather than those in whom it is caused by circumcision. The Latin translation omits the term lipodermos, but the subject matter and composition fit so well with other explicitly denominated descriptions of lipodermos repair (see below)that the attribution may be taken to be legitimate: