CIRCUMCISION
IN THE PHYSICIANS' OWN WORDS

"Hip trouble is from falling down, an accident that children with tight foreskins are especially liable to, owing to the weakening of the muscles produced by the condition of the genitals." - Lewis L. Sayer, M.D. "Circumcision for the Cure of Enuresis," Journal of the American Medical Association, 1887; 7: 631-3.

"Dr. E.S. Cooper, Editor of the San Francisco Medical Press, relates two cases of removal by the scalpel of the clitoris in young girls who were inadvertently addicted to the habit of masturbation, and for whom there was apparently no other alternative but hopeless insanity or an early grave. The result was a perfect cure in one case, and in the other the practice was broken up, and all the mental faculties improved except the memory, which is not restored." - Cooper, E.S. "Excision of the clitoris as a cure for masturbation," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1862; 66: 164.

"There can be no doubt of [masturbation’s] injurious effect, and of the proneness to practice it on the part of children with defective brains. Circumcision should always be practiced. It may be necessary to make the genitals so sore by blistering fluids that pain results from attempts to rub the parts." - Angel Money. Treatment of Disease in Children.. Philadelphia: P Blakiston, 1887, p.421.

"Our mothers, aunts and sisters have been doing this for years and no one was complaining." - Munir Fawzi, M.D., Professor of Gynecology at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, Dallas Morning News, 25 December 1996.

"Finally, circumcision probably tends to increase the power of sexual control. The only physiological advantage which the prepuce can be supposed to confer is that of maintaining the penis in a condition susceptible to more acute sensation than would otherwise exist. It may increase the pleasure of intercourse and the impulse to it: but these are advantages which in the present state of society can well be spared. If in their loss increase in sexual control should result, one should be thankful." - Editor, Medical News. Our London Letter. Medical News, 1900; 77:707-8.

The ruling bans circumcision unless deemed necessary for a female’s health - swelling of the labia or clitoris, for example. "I’m a university professor and I can decide whether a patient needs to be reduced or not. I will do it for medical reasons," he said with a smile. - Munir Fawzi, M.D., Professor of Gynecology at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, in news report "Egypt court bans female mutilation," Associated Press, 7 February 1998.

"I have repeatedly seen such cases as convulsions, constant crying in infants, simulated hip joint diseases, backwardness in studies, enuresis, marasmus, muscular incoordination, paralysis, masturbation, neurasthenia, and even epilepsy, cured or benefited by the proper performance of circumcision." - W.G. Steele. "Importance of Circumcision." Medical World, 1902; 20: 518-9.

"I do see a few cases (of emotional disturbance from circumcision) but when you compare their number to that of the number of women who are circumcised, they are very trivial indeed." - Yahia Oun Alla, Sudanese psychiatrist, interview, p. 137, Prisoners of Ritual: Odyssey into Female Genital Circumcision in Africa, Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, 1989.

"It is generally accepted that irritation derived from a tight prepuce may be followed by nervous phenomena, among these being convulsions and outbreaks resembling epilepsy. It is therefore not at all improbable that in many infants who die in convulsions, the real cause of death is a long or tight prepuce." - A.L. Wolbarst, M.D. "Universal Circumcision as a Sanitary Measure." Journal of the American Medical Association, 1914; 62: 92-7.

"Both Islam and medicine agree on its benefits. Uncircumcised girls...are more liable to infections and cancers." - Saed Thabet, M.D., gynecologist at Cairo’s Kasr El Aini Teaching Hospital, quoted in "Female Circumcision is Curbed in Egypt," British Medical Journal, 3 August 1996.

"Circumcision not only reduces the irritability of the child’s penis, but also the so-called passion of which so many married men are so extremely proud, to the detriment of their wives and their married life. Many youthful rapes could be prevented, many separations, and divorces also, and many an unhappy marriage improved if this unnatural passion were cut down by a timely circumcision." - L.W. Wuesthoff, M.D. "Benefits of Circumcision." Medical World, 1915; 33: 434.