Changes

''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. If we look over the world’s history, since in the latter years of the fifteenth century syphilis came down like a plague, walking with democratic tread through all walks and stations in life, laying out alike royalty or the vagrant, the curled-haired and slashed-doubleted knight, or the tonsured monk, we must conclude that syphilis has caused more families to become extinct than any ordinary plague, black death, or cholera epidemic. Without wishing to enter into a history of syphilis, it is not outside of the province of this book to allude to its frequency and spread''.

''The absence of the prepuce and the non-absorbing character of the skin of the glans penis, made so by constant exposure, with the necessary and unavoidably less tendency that these conditions give to favor syphilitic inoculation, are not evidently without their resulting good effects. Now and then syphilitic primary sores are found on the glans, or even in the urethra or on the outside skin of the penis, or outer parts of the prepuce; but the majority are, as a rule, situated either back of the corona or on the reflected inner fold of the prepuce immediately adjoining the corona, or they may be in the loose folds in the neighborhood of the frenum, the retention of the virus seemingly being assisted by the topographical condition and relation of the parts, and its absorption facilitated by the thinness of the mucous membrane, as well as by the active circulation and moisture and heat of the parts''.<ref>{{REFbook

[[Abraham L. Wolbarst| Abraham Leo Wolbarst]] (1914), an ardent promoter of male circumcision, collected the subjective opinions of several physicians and published those opinions unscientific speculations as evidence for his argument unproven assertions that circumcision was beneficial and healthful. He published an opinion-based article that claimed without evidence that circumcision prevented "venereal disease" now known as sexually transmitted disease. Wolbarst claimed that non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision prevented numerous diseases, including venereal disease (now known as sexually transmitted disease).<ref name="wolbarst1914">{{REFjournal