The Barbarity of Circumcision as a Remedy for Congenital Abnormality

Snow, Herbert, 1847-1930Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
92K words
Chapters
10

Tags

English Originals Medicine Public HealthMedical PracticeHistorical DocumentsControversial TopicHumanistic CareMedical EthicsSocial CritiqueBody AutonomyAcademic StudyReligious Tradition

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Barbarity of Circumcision as a Remedy for Congenital Abnormality by SnowAuthor: Snow, Herbert, 1847-1930,Language: English, Class: RD: Medicine: Surgery, Release Date: May 3, 2018

Editor's review

This book is a medical polemic published in the late nineteenth century by the English physician Herbert Snow, focusing on the practice of circumcision as a treatment for congenital abnormalities and arguing on two levels: clinical observation and ethical questioning. Its value as a historical document lies not in offering today's standards of care, but in showing how doctors weighed surgical benefit against bodily harm at a time when anesthesia, antisepsis, and the judgment of indications were still immature. Readers can see the rhetoric of medical argument, the style of case presentation, and the divisions within the professional community of the day. It is short and suitable as supplementary material for courses in the history of medicine, the history of surgery, and medical ethics, and for close reading by those interested in Victorian medical discourse. Note that the case descriptions and value judgments carry clear period limitations; read them against contemporary evidence-based medicine and the principle of informed consent, and do not take them as clinical advice.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening statement of the problem and the conclusion first, then return to the cases in between to grasp the author's argument structure.
  2. While reading, mark the evaluative terms the author uses and note them against today's terminology in medical ethics.
  3. Read alongside chapters on the development of nineteenth-century surgical antisepsis and anesthesia in a history of medicine textbook.
  4. The English original is short; consider reading it in one sitting and writing a two-hundred-word summary.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

Can this book serve as a reference for today's medical decisions? No. It is a polemical medical text from the late nineteenth century, reflecting the surgical conditions and attitudes of its time, and its selection of cases and mode of argument carry clear period limitations. Contemporary judgment of indications, standards of anesthesia and antisepsis, and informed consent procedures are entirely different; readers should treat it as a historical text, not a clinical guideline.
What level of English is needed to read this book? The original is nineteenth-century English medical writing, with long sentences and medical terms of Latin origin as well as euphemisms customary at the time. A university-level reading ability in English is enough to read it through; consult a medical dictionary for technical terms. If you care only about the argument, read the opening and closing paragraphs first to grasp the main points.
What are the length and publication details of this book? According to available information, Project Gutenberg released an electronic edition in 2019, classified under medicine and surgery, with the original electronic text released on May 3, 2018. It is a public-domain e-book and is short, suitable for reading through as a single article; the exact page count varies with the layout of the reading device.

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About the author

Snow, Herbert, 1847-1930 Author

Herbert Snow (1847–1930) was an English medical author active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about his life is limited, and details such as his exact dates and nationality await further verification. Only one of his works is held in this collection: The Barbarity of Circumcision as a Remedy for Congenital Abnormality. As the title indicates, the book questions the medical convention of using circumcision to correct congenital abnormalities, and its use of the word "barbarity" makes a pointed critical stance clear. It is polemical writing at the intersection of medical ethics and surgical practice, marked by the directness and moral concern of a Victorian controversy pamphlet, discussing the necessity of surgery alongside patients' rights. Though brief, such works reflect contemporary medical reflection on routine procedures and offer an early textual clue for the history of circumcision debates.