LITMIR.BIZ

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a compulsory barbarity. In the United States such a practice might do away with considerable divorce proceedings.

      Celsus gives a detailed description of the manner of infibulating as practiced among the Romans. According to this authority, it was employed by them on the youth attending the public schools, as well as upon the actors, dancers, and choristers, who were sold to the directors of the plays and spectacles. In the cabinet of the Roman College there are to be seen two small statues representing two infibulated musicians, which are remarkable for the excessive size of the ring and the leanness of the persons to which they are attached. The mode of applying this ring did not differ much from the usual method of preparing the ear for pendants.[21]

      Among the Greek monks mentioned, the infibulation serves a manifold purpose; it not only is a sure badge of chastity, but its weight and size is very often increased so as to render it an instrument of penitence, and considerable rivalry exists at times in this regard. Virey notices that the Hindoo bonze, or fakir, at times submits to infibulation at the same time that he takes his vows of eternal chastity. This ring is at times enormous, being sometimes six inches in diameter; so that it is a burden. These saints are held in great esteem and veneration.

      Nelaton, in the sixth volume of his “Surgery,” mentions the case of a man who presented himself at Dupuytren’s clinic with a tumefied, thickened, and somewhat dilapidated and ulcerated prepuce; this prepuce had worn a couple of golden padlocks for five years, a woman having thus infibulated his organ.

      In an elaborate work on the subject of circumcision,[22] de Vanier du Havre relates, on the authority of M. Martin Flaccourt, that with the Madécasses the children are circumcised on the eighth day after birth; and that in some portions of the country the mother swallows the removed portion of the prepuce, while in others the father loads the prepuce in some form of fire-arm, which is afterward fired in the air. In the neighborhood of Djezan, in Arabia, as reported by M. Fulgence Fresnel in the Revue de Deux Mondes of 1838, courtship and matrimony are not so great social events as they are with our society beaux. The occasion is probably considered social enough by the rest of the invited guests, but it can hardly be called an agreeable episode in the life of the groom. Those whose bashfulness prevents them from contracting marriage in civilized communities can have the consolation of knowing that in far-off Arabia, among the fierce followers of the conquerors of Spain and of the Eastern Empire, they have sympathizing fellow-sufferers whom the conventionalities of the country deter from rushing into matrimony. In this region, circumcision is performed on the adult at the time of his candidacy for matrimonial bliss. A more inauspicious occasion could not possibly have been chosen, unless as in another Mohammedan tribe, who circumcise the bridegroom on the day after his marriage and sprinkle the blood that falls from the cut onto the veil of the bride. The bride is present, and the victim is handed over to what might be called the executioner of the holy office, who proceeds to circumcise the victim in what might be called its utmost degree of performance and barbarity. This attention does not stop at the pendulous and loose prepuce. He devotes himself to the skin of the whole organ; beginning at the prepuce he gradually works backward, removing the whole skin of the penis—a flaying alive, and nothing more. Should the victim betray any sign of weakness, or allow as much as a sigh or groan to escape him, or even allow the muscles of the face to betray the fact that he is not immensely enjoying the occasion, the bride elect at once leaves him for good, saying that she does not wish a woman for a husband. A large proportion of the male population annually die from this operation. So that the Arabs of the Djezin can be likened to those spiders who lose their life while in the act of copulation—the female making a dinner from off the male—only the spider is said to die a happy death, while that of the Arab is one of misery.

       Margrave and Martyr have recorded a very peculiar practice common among some South American tribes: A kind of a tube is fastened onto the prepuce by means of threads of the tacoynhaa, the latter being the bark of a certain kind of a tree. Cabras brought one of the natives, so muzzled, to Lisbon, on the return from his first voyage. Some tribes were observed to wear an apparatus like the old-fashioned candle-extinguisher, the virile member having been forced into this receptacle, which was strapped about the loins.

      The travelers Spix and Martius found the practice of circumcision of both sexes in the region of the upper Amazon River and among the Tuncas. Squires mentions a curious custom of the aborigines of Nicaragua. They wound the penis of their little sons and let some of the blood flow on an ear of corn, which is divided among the assembled guests and eaten by them with great ceremony.

      On the fifth day after birth it is the custom among the Omaha Indians of North America to christen the infant, the child being stripped and spotted with a red pigment; considerable ceremony accompanies the act.[23]

      Among the cannibals of Australia, Lumholtz[24] observed a practice that seems to have no analogue in the wide world, either as an operation or in regard to its purposes. About ninety-five per cent. of the children are subjected to the ordeal. This is no less than the formation of an artificial hypospadias; this abnormality is formed through the penis into the urethra, near its junction with the scrotum; the wound is about an inch in length and is made with a flint knife which serves for no other purpose; the edges of the wound are burned with a hot stone, and the wound is subsequently kept open by the introduction of a small piece of wood, which, on healing, leaves a permanent opening. These cannibals undoubtedly are inspired by some Malthusian spirit which impels them thus to functionally eunuchize themselves in one sense, as during copulation the seminal discharge flies out backward through this opening, being thereby a most effectual check on further procreation. By some, this practice has been attributed to the unreliability of the seasons in regard to food-production; but Lumholtz observes that where the practice is most in vogue—among the tribes to the west of the Diamantina River and west and north of the Gulf of Carpentaria—the food-supply is not deficient, the region being full of rats, fish, and vegetables. All the tribes are not subject to the practice of the operation at the same time of life; in some, the hypospadias is not produced until in adult life and after the person has married and has become the father of one or two children, when he must submit to the requirements of the law; the operation seems to be invested with some civil or religious significance, as a palisade or stockade of trees is placed around the place where it is performed. A native, aged about twenty years, informed Lumholtz that the operation was performed because the blacks did not like to hear the children cry about the camp, and, further, that they were not desirous of having many children; this native had not yet become a father and had not yet been subjected to the operation. The natives were observed to be fat and in good physical condition.

      There is something mysterious in this operation. It can easily be conceived how circumcision might at times have been suggested by its spontaneous and natural performance without any assistance from man. Cullerier reports one case of partial circumcision through the means of an accident happening to a painter. The man was at work on a ladder, with a small bucket of paint hooked into one of the rounds above him; through some means the bucket lost its hold and in falling struck the penis on its dorsum with such force that the prepuce was cut through on a parallel with the corona of the glans for fully two-thirds of its circumference, the glans slipping through the opening and gathering in a fleshy bunch underneath the frenum. This man carried this abnormality for some years, when, desiring to marry and seeing that this appendage would be as much of an impediment as one of the huge rings worn by the Hindoo devotee, he applied to Cullevier for advice, who promptly removed it with the knife.[25] The writer has seen three cases, during his practice, of spontaneous circumcision, all resulting from phymosis as a secondary affection to venereal disease. The first case occurred when he first entered into practice; it was in a young, stout, and full-blooded man with a violent gonorrhœa. There was much swelling and tumefaction of the whole organ, which seemed to be very rebellious to all treatment. At one of his morning visits he was horrified to observe a transverse, livid mark at what seemed to be the middle of the organ; by noon this had gained ground to the right and left and there was no mistaking that it meant nothing less than mortification. Never having seen a case, the natural uncomfortable conclusion was that, through some cause or other or the natural result of excessive congestion, the man was about to lose one-half of his organ; and Burnside at Fredericksburg was in no greater state of suspense and uncertainty with the fate of the Army of the Potomac on his hands than the writer must acknowledge

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