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

Abstract

178 BOOKREVIEWS implications for the present and future. This is particularlytrue at this time, when the Australian government is implementing new Indigenous policy surrounding shared responsibility agreements with varying degrees of success and with substantial criticism. At the same time the Australian government is also reconsidering the appropriatenessof maintaining a multicultural society. Several Australian government ministers in recent weeks including the prime minister have demanded that 'new' Australians, namely refugees and immigrants, assimilate to Australian culture and values, including the requirement that they must speak English before Australian citizenship will be awarded to them. Will these types of responses, to people seen as 'other,' as 'non-Australian' and thus not partof the public, see the repeating of history not only in ideology but also in policy and actions? Time will tell; in the meantime, however, books such as Raftery's challenge us through the illumination of thepast, by explaining why things areas they are now and requiringus to radically rethink 'our currentprescriptions for improving health and to suggest alternative futures' (p. 12). KYLLIE CRIPPS UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain. By Robert Darby (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005, ISBN 0-226-13645). 374 pp + Index. This is aseriousbook aboutthepenis, theforeskin, andcircumcision. Darby's central thesis is that during the nineteenth century the penis came to be associated with depravity and moral decay which in turnallowed the medical profession to promote circumcision as a legitimate medical intervention aimed at prevention of a sundry of conditions imagined and real. Darby acknowledges thatthis study is flawed by lack of access to original documents inthe United Kingdom. Darby's introductory chapter gives an excellent overview and provides the reader with his position on the topic. In setting out his thesis he relies heavily on contemporary scholars such as Geoffrey Miller and David Gollaher who have both written extensively on circumcision. Health& History• 8/2 • 2006 179 Darby uses Miller's description of physicians as norm entrepreneurswho demonised the phallus as 'polluted, unnatural, harmful, alien, effeminized and disfigured' (p. 4) as evidence of their role in circumcision. But Miller's essay, Circumcision: A Cultural-Legal Analysis, examined the legal and cultural meaning of circumcision in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century using a multifactorial approach to explain its popularity. The doctors were just one factor among many. Gollaher like Miller also recognised the many factors at play in the rise of circumcision, not least that doctors and quacks in the nineteenth century were subject to cultural pressures and were not detached scientific observers but professionals who provided a service for a fee. While Darby says this is revealing he does not spend too much time examining the multiple factors other than the role of physicians that may have led to the rise of circumcision in nineteenth-century Britain. His obsession in this book is proving that the medical profession made circumcision a routine and popular procedure which until then 'was scarcely known in the Westernworld' (p. 4). Darby introduces the reader to detailed historical events associated with male sexuality.He also reacquaintsus withVictorian medical conditions such as congenital phimosis, spermatorrhea, and nerve force theory, terms long forgotten. This is a fascinating read with argumentswell supportedby appropriatereferencing. The main distraction is Darby's strong negative views about the medical profession. I thought this unnecessary given his very detailedandrigorousexamination of thetopic. Partof Darby'sthesis is thatduringthenineteenthcenturythemedical profession believed circumcision was a cure for certain diseases as well as a method for controlling sexual desires. His detailed account of nineteenth century doctors' take on morality and sexuality is persuasive and leaves me thinking thatdoctors then viewed the genitals differently from other partsof the human anatomy. But we know many areas of medicine that, looking back, seem absurd,callous, or negligent. Up to and including the nineteenth century, doctors believed in bleeding patients and themselves. We now know that bleeding caused illness and made conditions worse. Their practices are a reminder of the fallibility of the medical profession but we do not think worse of the profession for their use of bleeding. I cannot help thinking Darby has not been able to separate...