Peter Charles Remondino

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Peter Charles Remondino (1846-1926) was a prominent San Diego, California medical doctor, author in the late 19th century.[1] He is famous for his book that promoted male circumcision.

Life before San Diego

Remondino was born in 1846 in Turin (Torino) Piedmont, (Piemonte in Italian), which is now a region of Italy.[1] Remondino migrated to America with his father at the age of eight.[1] The family moved to Minnesota where he grew up.[1]

Remondino spoke several languages, including French, German, Latin, and Sioux.[1]

Neither Peter nor Charles are Italian names so he apparently anglicized his names at some point.

Remondino entered Jefferson Medical School at Philadelphia in 1863.[1] After medical school he served the United States Army as a medical doctor during the Civil War. He had some illness that he contracted from the bite of a mosquito.

After he returned to Minnesota, he continued to have health issues. He moved to San Diego where he believed the climate would be beneficial to his health in 1873, where he seems to have recovered his health. He practiced medicine and surgery there,[1]

Life in San Diego

Remondino married Sophia Ann Earle on Sept. 27, 1877 in San Diego, California. They had four children.[1]

Remondino's History of Circumcision

Remondino published a curious book in 1896 entitled HISTORY OF CIRCUMCISION FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT: Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance, with a HISTORY OF EUNUCHISM, HERMAPHRODISM, ETC., AND OF THE DIFFERENT OPERATIONS PRACTICED UPON THE PREPUCE.[2]

Although Remondino professed Christianity, he advocated non-therapeutic Jewish circumcision for Christians as a measure for both moral and physical health.[3]

Remondino evidently detested the prepuce, a normal, healthy human body part, which he described as:

It is not alone the tight-constricted, glans-deforming, onanism-producing, cancer-generating prepuce that is the particular variety of prepuce that is at the bottom of the ills and ailments, local or constitutional, that may affect man through its presence. The loose, pendulous prepuce, or even the prepuce in the evolutionary stage of disappearance, that only loosely covers one-half of the glans, is as dangerous as his long and constricted counterpart.

Was Remondino circumcised?

Remondino's distaste and dislike for the prepuce or foreskin prompts one to ask how a man could stand to have prepuce which he detested attached to his body? History does not tell us his circumcision status, but modern psychology may give us a clue. We now know that circumcised men who become fathers and circumcised doctors express a preference for circumcision as Remondino did. Moreover, circumcision is a traumatic procedure.[4] Traumatized persons have a tendency to repeat the trauma on others.[5] Remondino performed numerous circumcisions.

If Remondino was circumcised, how would it have occurred? When Remondino was born in Turin in 1846, only Jews circumcised their infant boys, which was done by a mohel. There is some speculation that Remondino was descended from Sephardic Jews, so he may have had a ritual Jewish circumcision.




References

  1. a b c d e f g h REFweb Remondino, Peter C.. Peter Charles Remondino Autobiography (1846-1926), sandiegohistory.org, San Diego Historical Society. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  2. REFbook Remondino, Peter (1891): HISTORY OF CIRCUMCISION FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT: Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance, with a HISTORY OF EUNUCHISM, HERMAPHRODISM, ETC., AND OF THE DIFFERENT OPERATIONS PRACTICED UPON THE PREPUCE. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  3. REFbook Remondino, Peter (1891): Preface, in: The History of Circumcision. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis. Pp. iii. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  4. REFjournal Taddio, Anna, Goldbach, Morton, Ipp, Moshe, Stevens, Bonnie, Koren, Gideon. Effect of neonatal circumcision on pain responses during vaccination in boys. Lancet. 4 February 1995; 345: 291-2. PMID. DOI. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  5. REFjournal van der Kolk, Bessell. The compulsion to repeat the trauma: re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism. Psychiatr Clin North Am. June 1989; 12(2): 389-411. PMID. Retrieved 21 May 2020.