Surgical Temptation

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 a practice it had traditionally abhorred and then abandoned it after only two generations is the subject of A Surgical Temptation. Robert Darby reveals that circumcision has always been related to the question of how to control male sexuality. This study explores the process by which the male genitals, and the foreskin especially, were pathologized as a source of physical and moral decay. But A Surgical Temptation is not merely of historical interest. Why does circumcision usually mean circumcision of infants? Why does the pressure for "health" circumcision continue? These questions cannot be answered without reference to its nineteenth century origins as a mechanism for sexual discipline.A Surgical Temptation provides essential background to current debates about the medical, ethical, and social aspects of circumcision, and the ongoing demonization of the foreskin in our own time.

A meticulously designed study, packed with historical detail. . . . A Surgical Temptation will be recognized as a major contribution to our understanding of the way beliefs about sexuality have shaped medical practice, and vice versa.--Leonard B. Glick "Sexuality Research & Social Policy", A Surgical Temptation reveals the history of practice, and the arguments for and against circumcision in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Robert Darby has undertaken an extremely worthwhile topic that adds considerably to our knowledge of sexual attitudes and medical practices. It should be of interest to a wide range of audiences interested in the history of medicine, gender, and sexuality.--Lesley A. Hall (9/21/2004 12:00:00 AM), Left to its devices, the human male foreskin goes on its merry way, but Victorian England would have none of that. The uncircumcised penis was blamed for the 'moral and physical decay' of syphilis and masturbation, while doctors characterised the emission of sperm as 'a life-threatening illness that demanded drastic treatment if there was to be any hope of a cure'. Medical historian Robert Darby, . . . brilliantly records the rise of circumcision as 'a miracle-working cure-all' for many ills, including hysteria.--Tony Maniaty "Weekend Australian" (9/12/2006 12:00:00 AM), If A Surgical Temptation were merely a history of circumcision in Britain, it would succeed. But it is much more than that. For Robert Darby, medical debates about circumcision become a window through which to address bigger themes--the ways in which medical attitudes about male sexuality developed and changed slowly from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. And that really serves to make his even bigger claim--that through its effort to control men's sexuality and discussion about men's sexuality, modern British medicine began to constitute itself as a culturally legitimate expert knowledge.--Michael Kimmel "SUNY, Stony Brook " (3/15/2005 12:00:00 AM)

Robert Darby is an independent medical historian and freelance writer. His most recent book is an abridged edition of George Drysdale's classic polemic against Victorian morality, Elements of Social Science. He lives in Canberra, Australia.