Circumcision is a surgical procedure in which the skin covering the head of the penis (prepuce) is cut and removed. Circumcision is one of the oldest documented surgical procedures, performed in Egypt 6,000 years ago. The Ankh-Mahor reliefs in Saqqara near Cairo show circumcision in detail on adults. Throughout history, circumcision has most often been performed as a religious belief. In Jews, it is performed on the 5th-8th day after birth by trained circumcisors called “mohels.” In Islam, although it is not mandatory, all children are circumcised until puberty. Circumcision for therapeutic or preventive purposes began in the late 19th century. In publications from that period, it was suggested that circumcision was good for alcoholism, epilepsy, asthma, urinary incontinence, hernia and gout. Unfortunately, these false beliefs were not questioned sufficiently until the first half of the 20th century. Today, approximately 20% of men in the world are circumcised. This rate is 80% in the United States (US). While the rate of newborn circumcision in the US was around 90% in the 1950s, it has dropped to 60% today. Again, in the UK, the rate of circumcised children, which was 20% in the 1950s, is around 5% today.
Why is circumcision performed?
Circumcision is mainly performed for religious beliefs and medical reasons. Apart from these two reasons, some social events such as wars have also affected circumcision in different geographies. For example, when inflammation of the foreskin due to desert sand became very common in Australian soldiers assigned to Africa and the Middle East during World War II, adult circumcision became the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the army. The desire of these soldiers to make their children resemble them and the fear of a possible World War III increased the frequency of circumcision to over 90% in Australia in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, white men who settled in the New Continent became circumcised like the native Aboriginals.