Overview

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, while offering glimpses into the lives of such figures as James Boswell, John Maynard Keynes, and W. H. Auden. Examining the development of knowledge about genital anatomy, concepts of health, sexual morality, the rise of the medical profession, and the nature of disease, Darby shows how these factors transformed attitudes toward the male body and its management and played a vital role in the emergence of modern medicine.

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Reviews

"""A Surgical Temptation reveals the history of the practice of, 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 in the history of medicine, gender, and sexuality."" - Lesley A. Hall, author of Sex, Gender, and Social Change in Britain since 1880"""

A Surgical Temptation reveals the history of the practice of, 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 in the history of medicine, gender, and sexuality. - Lesley A. Hall, author of Sex, Gender, and Social Change in Britain since 1880

Author Information

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

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