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'''{{FULLPAGENAME}}''' features [[intactivist]] Ed Wallerstein.
==Video==
<br>
<youtube>ajP8pMBYBhI</youtube>
<br>The continuing practice of [[Routine Infant Circumcision| routine ]] neonatal nonreligious [[circumcision]] represents an enigma, particularly in the [[United States]]. About 80 percent of the world's population do not practice circumcision, nor have they ever done so. Among the non-circumcising nations are Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, Russia, China, and Japan. People employing circumcision do so either for "health" reasons or as a religious ritual practiced by Muslims, Jews, most black Africans, non-white Australians, and others.
Read [[Edward Wallerstein]]'s pioneering article here.<ref name="wallerstein1985">{{REFjournal
The origin of the ritual practice is unknown. There is evidence of its performance in Israel in Neolithic times (with flint knives) at least 6000 years ago. Jews accept the Old Testament origin as a covenant between God and Abraham, although it is generally agreed that the practice of circumcision in Egypt predated the [[Abrahamic covenant]] by centuries. Ritual Circumcision is not germane to this discussion except insofar as the surgical ritual impinges upon accepted medical practice.
So called "health" circumcision originated in the nineteenth century, when most diseases were of unknown etiology. Within the miasma of myth and ignorance, a theory emerged that [[masturbation]] caused many and varied ills. It seemed logical to some physicians to perform genital surgery on both sexes to stop [[masturbation]]; the major technique applied to males was [[circumcision]]. This was especially true in the English-speaking countries because it accorded with the mid-Victorian attitude toward sex as sinful and debilitating.
The most prolific enumerator of the health benefits of circumcision was Dr. [[Peter Charles Remondino| P. C. Remondino]]. In 1891 this physician claimed that the surgery prevented or cured about a hundred ailments, including alcoholism, epilepsy, asthma, enuresis, hernia, gout, rectal prolapse, rheumatism, kidney disease, and so forth. Such ludicrous claims are still disseminated and possibly believed. The book was reprinted in 1974, without change, and the Circulating Branch Catalogue of the New York Public Library (1983) listed the Remondino book, showing a publication date of 1974. One physician, writing in ''Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality'' (1974), called the book "pertinent and carefully thought out."
In the 75-year period (1875 to 1950) there was virtually no opposition to routine circumcision in the [[United States]]. Instead there were many articles in medical journals and textbooks extolling the practice; the issue was ignored in the popular press. Yet in the more than a century of acceptance of [[Routine Infant Circumcision| routine circumcision]] in the English-speaking countries, from 1870 to the present, no other country adopted newborn circumcision.
The first serious questioning of the practice did not occur until late 1949 (in England with the publication of [[Douglas Gairdner|Gairdner]]'s "The Fate of the Foreskin."<ref name="gairdner1949">{{GairdnerDM 1949}}</ref> which began to affect the practice of circumcision by the British. In 1963, an editorial in ''J.A.M.A. '' called the attitude of the medical profession paradoxical and confused, and admitted that the facts about circumcision were still unknown. This was followed by several critiques of circumcision such as those by Morgan (1965<ref name="morgan1965">{{REFjournal
|last=Morgan
|init=WKC
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Film about circumcision and intactivism]]
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:USA]]
[[Category:From IntactWiki]]
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