Circumcision : A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery

How has a medical practice that carries substantial risk to the patient and offers very little actual benefit become so widely accepted by parents and fiercely advocated by the medical community? Historian of medicine David Gollaher tells the strange history of medicine's oldest enigma and most persistent ritual in Circumcision. From the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through circumcision's use by the rising medical community in the nineteenth century as prevention for ailments ranging from bedwetting to paralysis, the great mystery has been the persistence of the practice through vastly different social contexts. The Jewish tradition -- Christians and Muslims -- Symbolic wounds -- From ritual to science -- The fabric of the foreskin -- Circumcision and disease: the quest for evidence -- Backlash -- Female circumcision -- Appendix: evaluative research and the nature of medical evidence This worldwide history of circumcision, from ancient times to the present, looks at the procedure as initiation, religious and social ritual, and indicator of ethnic and social status THE GENESIS OF CIRCUMCISION, LIKE MAGIC AND RELIGION, IS IMMEMORIAL.