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=== Surgical treatment ===
The surgical techniques developed in antiquity to repair the lipodermic penis have been described in modern medical journals,<ref>Jody P. Rubin, "[http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/rubin/ Celsus' Decircumcision Operation: Medical and Historical Implications]," ''Urology'', 1980, ''16'': 121–24</ref> <ref name="schultheiss1998">Dirk Schultheiss ''et al''.,"[http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/schultheiss/ Uncircumcision: A Historical Review of Preputial Restoration]," ''Plast. & Reconstruct. Surg''., 1998, ''101'': 1990–98.</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:
:''"And, if the glans is bare and the man wishes for the look of the thing to have it covered, that can be done; but more easily in a boy than in a man; in one in whom the defect is natural, than in one who after the custom of certain races has been circumcised; and in one who has the glans small and the adjacent skin rather ample, while the penis itself is shorter, rather than in one in whom the conditions are contrary.''