Circumcision: A History Of The World's Most Controversial Surgery [Hardcover]

David Gollaher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2000

From the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through its use by nineteenth-century doctors as prevention for ailments including bedwetting, paralysis, and epilepsy, circumcision has had a long and varied history. Perhaps the greatest mystery, however, is its persistence over time through vastly different social contexts.Historian of medicine David Gollaher takes a comprehensive look at the practice in this lively, scholarly history. Circumcision also addresses the growing controversy over the procedure’s continuance, and those opposing routine circumcision will find support here. Gollaher concludes that “if male circumcision were confined to developing nations, it would by now have emerged as an international cause célèbre.”

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

More than a million infant boys are circumcised every year in America, the highest occurrence of this procedure in the world. Why? Out of sheer cultural habit, concludes David Gollaher in his groundbreaking study, Circumcision. The tremendous momentum behind Gollaher's account is generated by one simple question: what is known about this most common of procedures? Alarmingly, precious little. Gollaher remedies that problem by tracing the historical roots of circumcision as a rite of passage into manhood in various ancient cultures before bringing the reader to 19th-century America, when circumcision rates skyrocketed through endorsements by the nascent American medical profession, which credited circumcision with exaggerated health benefits. Circumcision would eventually turn into a mark of class distinction, and the surgery would become entrenched in modern medical practices, despite scant study of its benefits, dangers, or side effects. Gollaher is to be commended for maintaining an even perspective on a practice that is sure to become increasingly controversial; he allows the research itself to fascinate and illuminate. As expected, there are many unsettling graphic descriptions in this book, but its most horrifying revelation is its most casual: the incontrovertible fact that circumcision remains the least understood--yet most widely practiced--surgery in the United States. --Sumi Hahn Almquist

Review

". . . Berlin is the audacious, craved city of modern times, and David Clay Large the star reporter at its city desk." -- Peter

". . . Large demonstrates in these pages that he is as good a raconteur as he is a historian." -- Gordon A. Craig, Stanford University

". . . a vivid and compelling history of the city which was in many ways the fulcrum of the twentieth century." -- Niall Ferguson,

". . . a vivid picture of a city . . ..Admirably broad and informative." -- Fritz Stern, Columbia University

". . . absorbing, penetrating, and-in the best sense of the word-entertaining exploration of Berlin's turbulent modern history." -- Peter Hayes, Professor of History, Northwestern University

"David L. Gollaher's judicious and anatomically unflinching study seems likely to prompt considerable debate-not to mention a lot of crossed legs." -- Mirabella

"In his fascinating new bookhe [Gollaher] sets out to make 'the strange familiar' but also 'the familiar strange." -- The New York Times

"There are several good books on modern Berlin, but none has quite the authority and flair of Large's Berlin." -- Peter Gay,

"Vivid narrative history of a city like no other, related with power and style." -- Kirkus Reviews

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (March 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465043976
• ISBN-13: 978-0465043972
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #973,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fasinating, illuminating, disturbing and well-written, March 17, 2000

By 

mary walker (Bethesda, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Circumcision: A History Of The World's Most Controversial Surgery (Hardcover)

This book has so many interesting facets that it's hard to do it justice in a brief review. For my money, though, the chapter on how circumcision entered modern Anglo-American medicine -- how it was transformed from a Jewish ritual into a routine medical procedure deemed suitable for all boys -- is the highlight. By explaining the intellectual and cultural context of medicine in the 1870s, Gollaher explains why circumcision came to seem so reasonable (and so powerful). He clearly opposes routine circumcision, though not in a tendentious way. It's the cumulative weight of available evidence. I am the mother of two boys who were circumcised in the hospital. I had no real concept of what was done to them. The pediatrician didn't sell the procedure very hard, but he did say that most parents had it done and that he didn't see much harm in it. After reading "Circumcision," I wish my husband and I had given it more thought. We probably would have made a different decision.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too Late for Some But Maybe Not for Many, Snips at Ignorance, July 31, 2000

By 

Azlan Adnan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Circumcision: A History Of The World's Most Controversial Surgery (Hardcover)

You might think that the most common surgery in the United States would also be the least controversial-an operation whose medical necessity and benefits have proved beyond question. And you would be wrong. As this fascinating history of that procedure makes clear, circumcision is rooted not in medical science, but in the deepest recesses of religion and culture.

Circumcision is performed on more than one million infant and prepubescent boys around the world every year. In America, even though a growing number of physicians dispute its benefits, circumcision remains the most frequently performed elective surgical procedure. In 1995, 64.1% of US male newborns were circumcised-yet there is no proven medical benefit to this practice on normal infants. This book, by medical historian David L. Gollahar presents a fascinating history of this controversial practice and why it has persisted over time through vastly different social contexts.

As this book shows, the removal of genital foreskin has a long and varied history: from the extraordinarily painful initiation rite of the ancient Egyptians, through the Hebrew purification ritual, through its use by nineteen-century doctors as prevention for ailments including bedwetting, paralysis, syphilis, and epilepsy, to the present persistence of female circumcision in African cultures. Gollaher also addresses the current controversy over the procedure's continuance, and those opposing routine circumcision will find support here.

Gollaher concludes that "if male circumcision were confined to developing nations," similar to the status of female circumcision, "it would by now have emerged as an international cause célèbre."

David L. Gollaher (1949- ) is President and CEO of the California Healthcare Institute, a statewide public policy research and advocacy institute. He holds a PhD in History from Harvard and has served on the facilities of San Diego State University's Graduate School of Public Health and the University of California, San Diego.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To paraphrase Kirkus, it never WAS so enjoyable., March 24, 2000

By 

Samuel Richmond (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Circumcision: A History Of The World's Most Controversial Surgery (Hardcover)

The value of what medical historian Gollaher has accomplished here cannot be overstated. By producing a book of such intellectual independence and quality, he not only demystifies circumcision's cultural cachets but virtually demolishes its far-flung (and variously far-fetched) utilitarian rationales as well.

Tracing its long and stubborn history, Gollaher examines with clarity the confounded insights of circumcision apologists from Philo and Maimonides to Bruno Bettelheim and John Harvey Kellogg. But this is by Gollaher's own admission "a history, not a polemic or tract for the times," and therein lies the achievement. Maintaining an attitude of rigorous detachment, he declines to proselytize in favor of anti-cutting activists yet ultimately supports their brief by letting evidence rather than emotion hold the floor. And his summary of the foreskin restoration movement, the first to appear in a mainstream press publication, will destigmatize its appeal to a larger audience.

There are a few gaps in his otherwise meticulous research-- his language regarding sexual consequences is equivocal, and he curiously overlooks the Anand-Hickey neonatal pain investigation in favor of less reliable studies-- but the sweep and relevance of the project are no less comprehensive. "Circumcision" will go a long way toward laying the dual ghost of the procedure's imagined medical and behavioral benefits, and thus hasten the day when it is consigned to the obsolescent realm of other, ironically more advanced forms of bloodletting.