Explorations of the Unknown

Abstract

Medical knowledge about female genital mutilation, a practice still widespread today, dates back to antiquity. Coinciding with the “rediscovery” of female genitalia, information about clitoridectomy and infibulation began circulating in anatomical texts from around 1550 onwards. In addition to classical sources, traveller’s reports are also carefully consulted here. Terminological ambiguities typify these descriptions of the morphology and physiology of the pudenda. This study discloses and pieces together sources and discourses that have previously only been studied as fragments, thereby tracing the prevailing acceptance among physicians of mutilating ‘corrections’ of the pudenda. It concludes that medically and morally based criticism of such practices was an exception that by the 17th century had been all but forgotten