In the Australian
Medical Gazette, May, 1883, there is an account of some of the
methods of the Central Australians of preventing conception. One
was to make an opening into the male urethra just anterior to the
scrotum, and another was to slit up the entire urethra so far as
to make but a single canal from the scrotum to the glans penis.
Bourke quotes Palmer in mentioning that it is a custom to split
the urethra of the male of the Kalkadoon tribe, near Cloncurry,
Queensland, Australia Mayer of Vienna describes an operation of
perforation of the penis among the Malays; and Jagor and
Micklucho-Maclay report similar customs among the Dyaks and other
natives of Borneo, Java, and Phillipine Islands.
Circumcision is a rite of great antiquity. The Bible furnishes
frequent records of this subject, and the bas-reliefs on some of
the old Egyptian ruins represent circumcised children. Labat has
found traces of circumcision and excision of nymphae in mummies.
Herodotus remarks that the Egyptians practiced circumcision
rather as a sanitary measure than as a rite. Voltaire stated that
the Hebrews borrowed circumcision from the Egyptians; but the
Jews claimed that the Phoenicians borrowed this rite from the
Israelites.
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