y in this country selling lubricants and jellies to enhance sex, but theyre unnecessary for those of us lucky enough to have married an uncircumcised man. An intact mans glans is naturally moist and juicy.The doctor swabs the babys testicles and penis with antiseptic-soaked gauze, then lays one cloth over his torso, another over his legs, and a third, with a small hole in the middle, over his genitals. He pops the tiny penis through the hole. The baby is still crying. The nurse mentions that babies feel safest in the fetal position. She says they hate having their arms held away from their bodies. The parents are not in the room. The nurse shuts the door.Outside of the Jewish community, where its a religious rite, circumcision was practically unheard of in America until 1870, when Lewis Sayre, M.D., claimed to have cured a 5-year-old boy of paralysis by stretching out his foreskin and snipping it off. For the next two decades, Dr. Sayre and his associates crusaded for circumcision, claiming it could cure hip-joint disease, epilepsy, hernia, convulsions, elephantiasis, poor eyesight, tuberculosis, and rectal prolapse, among other things. This was all disproved, of course, and circumcision would probably have vanished from the American medical scene had its backers not found a compelling new way to sell it: as a cure for masturbation.To the publicly puritanical but privately lascivious Victorians, masturbation was the root of numerous social maladies and physical illnesses, including blindness and even insanity. Naturally, they believed, if circumcision could prevent masturbation, it would prevent other diseases as well.Doctors of the time reported that removal of the protective covering of the glans tends to dull the sensibility of the penis and thereby diminishes sexual appetite. In 1888, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., of cereal fame, summed up the medical professions opinion and gave justification for the next 60 years of foreskin removal....
