Note 233 — SECOND SECTION. Influences which served to hinder to a greater or less degree the inception of Diseases consequent upon the Use or Misuse of the Genital Organs.

Stoll, Praelectiones in diversos morbos chronicos, (Lectures on certain Chronic Diseases), Vol. I. p. 96, writes as follows: Antiquissimum cum Henslero pronuntiavi, atque inter Aegyptios, Judaeos, Graecos dein et Romanos perfrequentem ut quasdam harum gentium consuetudines, mores, leges ac statuta forte inde possis repertere.... Sic praeceptum circumcisionis, antiquissima plane consuetudo, idcirco fortassis instituta fuerat, atque tanquam ritus sacer, tanquam praeceptum quoddam, de quo dispensari nemo queat, introducebatur, quod circumcisus videatur difficilius morbum urethrae contrahere, rariusque ablato scilicet praeputio, intra quod virus haeret, rodit, cancros facit, quod et ipsum efficitur pessime in phymosi, paraphymosi. Glans ipsa in homine minus facile virus resorbere videtur, occallescens nempe.... Nota viriginitatis sedulo examinata est in neonuptis puellis; custodia foeminarum per totum orientem; adulterii crimen, maxime foeminarum, morte expiatum videntur docere, scivisse antiquitatem remotissimam, morbum quendam gravem, immundum volgivaga Venere dari et communicari. (With Hensler I pronounce it—Venereal disease—to be of most ancient origin, and to have been of such frequency among the Egyptians, Jews, as well as the Greeks and Romans, that it may well be possible to discover in it the cause of sundry habits, customs, laws and enactments of these Peoples.... For instance the precept of circumcision, evidently an extremely ancient custom, was very possibly first instituted for this reason, and was introduced in the guise of a sacred rite, a ceremonial precept from which there can be no dispensation, because the circumcised man would seem less readily to contract disease of the urethra, and in cases where the prepuce has been removed, inside which the poison remains adherent and corrodes, less frequently suffers from chancres, an effect that follows in its worst form in phymosis and paraphymosis. The glans penis itself in a man thus treated seems to absorb the poison less easily, being in fact grown partially callous.... The fact that the sign of virginity was scrupulously examined in newly married virgins, the careful guard kept over women throughout the East, the penalty of death attached to the crime of adultery, especially in women, all seem to show that the remotest Antiquity was aware of some serious, foul disease being given and communicated by indiscriminate Love.