A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain

by Robert Darby

Book Overview

In the eighteenth century, the Western world viewed circumcision as an embarrassing disfigurement peculiar to Jews. A century later, British doctors urged parents to circumcise their sons as a routine precaution against every imaginable sexual dysfunction, from syphilis and phimosis to masturbation and bed-wetting. Thirty years later the procedure again came under hostile scrutiny, culminating in its disappearance during the 1960s. Why Britain adopted...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226136450
• ISBN13: 9780226136455
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.3"