History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present : $b Moral and physical reasons for its performance, with.

Few practices have as long or as varied a history as this one, and this ambitious study sets out to trace it across cultures and centuries with a physician's eye and an antiquarian's appetite.

What it's about

The book surveys circumcision from the earliest recorded times down to the author's own day, gathering evidence from religion, custom, and medicine. It considers the ritual and cultural roles the practice has held among different peoples, and then turns to the moral and physical reasons advanced for its performance. The result is part cultural history, part medical argument, written in the confident, sweeping manner of nineteenth-century inquiry.

Themes

Custom, health, and belief intertwine throughout, as the book moves between anthropology and medicine. It reflects the era's faith in physical and hygienic explanation, and its tendency to marshal history in support of contemporary medical opinion. Read today, it is as revealing about its own moment as about its subject.

Why it still matters

As a document in the history of medicine and of attitudes toward the body, it captures how a practice at the meeting point of faith and physiology was understood and justified in its time. It remains a reference point for historians of medicine, religion, and cultural practice.

Who it's for

For readers of medical and cultural history, and those interested in how the nineteenth century approached questions of ritual, health, and the body. A specialist historical work, best read with its period firmly in mind.