Year
Month
Day
Event
~300,
000,
000
BCE
Reptiles evolve internal fertilization, using a retractable penis.
~100,
000,
000
BCE
A proto-mammalian species evolves the foreskin. (Alligators also have one: it would be an easy thing to evolve more than once.)
~600,
000
BCE
The species Homo sapiens emerges, still wearing his foreskin.
*4004 BCE
Adam created (with a foreskin), according to Gen 1 27 or 2 7.
~3100 BCE
Egypt invaded from the south - by tribes bringing circumcision?
Egypt: bas-relief made for the tomb of the 6th Dynasty tjatey (vizier) Ankhmabor (Overseer of the Great House, First Under the King [Teti]) in Saqqara that may show genital mutilation being performed. The actual relief is hard to interpret:
1713 BCE / *1913 BCE
Abraham is instructed by G*d to circumcise himself and the tribe of Israel, according to Gen.17 10-27.
*1739 BCE
The sons of Jacob impose circumcision on the Hivites to weaken them, according to Gen. 34 14 -25.
*1491 BCE
Moses' wife Zipporah circumcises his son Gershon as some kind of reproach to him, according to Ex.4 25.
*1491 BCE
Israelites abandon circumcision (according to Josh 5 5) when they leave Egypt.
*1451 BCE
Israelites resume circumcision according to Josh. 5 2, "...again the second time" suggesting to one rabbi in the Talmud that Periah (radical circumcision) was instituted then.
*mid-13th c BCE
Moses mentions circumcision in passing on Mt Sinai (Leviticus 12 3) while specifying the duration of women's impurity after childbirth.
*1063 BCE
David kills and circumcises 200 Philistines (twice as many as Saul asked for) to provide a bride-price, according to 1 Sam. 18, 24 - 47.
~450 BCE
Greek historians note circumcision and penectomy among the Arabs, far antedating Islam.
Herodotus (484 - 420 BCE) notes circumcision among the Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Macrones, as well as the Egyptian priestly caste. He criticises the fanatical ritual cleanliness of the Egyptians, saying "They [even] practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be clean than comely." - a terrible price in Greek eyes. (The context is of things Egyptians do that are the reverse of what other [more sensible] people do.) He notes that the salutory influence of Greek culture caused the Phoenicians to abandon circumcision. (Hodges)
~170 BCE
The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175 - 165 BCE) consolidates Alexander's empire, and attempts to impose Greek civilization, including a ban on ritual circumcision. Some Jews seek foreskin restoration.
~3 BCE
Jan
1
Jesus is circumcised according to Luke 2 21.
43 CE
St Paul convinces a meeting in Jerusalem that circumcision is not essential for Christian converts.
~45
132
Emperor Hadrian (98-138 CE) extends a previous ban, by Emperors Domitian (81-96) and Nerva (96-98), on castration of citizens or slaves throughout the Roman Empire, to include circumcision.
~140
Mishnah (commentary on Torah) first written down, details Periah (radical circumcision) giving rise to the idea that it was instituted then, to prevent Hellenized Jews from passing as intact in the Greek gymnasia.
Emperor Antoninus Pius lifts the legal prohibition on circumcision, but only for Jews, not their slaves, servants or other non-Jews (as prescribed by Jewish law).
~170
Galen (131-201 CE) describes methods of foreskin restoration.
~320
Emperor Constantine renews the ban on Jews circumcising non-Jews.
533
The Digest of Justinian restates the ban of Constantine.
~550
Christian church begins celebrating January 1 as the Feast of the Circumcision (of Christ).
570
Mohammed born "already circumcised" supposedly giving rise to Islamic circumcision, the most frequent single kind (but see ~450 BCE).
12th C CE
Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides or "the Rambam" (1135-1204 CE), writes his "Guide for the Perplexed".
~1350
Polynesian voyagers reach Aotearoa (later "New Zealand") and abandon supercision.
1523
~1550
1710
Clergyman turned physician Bekker publishes "Onania, or The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its frightful consequences in both sexes, considered, with spiritual and physical advice, etc."
1741
Swiss physician Tissot publishes "Onanism, Or, A Treatise on the Disorders of Masturbation" beginning the spread of the "masturbation danger" theory throughout Europe.
1842
French surgeon Claude-François Lallemand completes Les Pertes seminales involontaires (Involuntary seminal losses), promoting belief in "spermatorrhoea" - the view that almost any discharge from the penis was dangerous - promoting acupuncture (with large needles pushed into the prostate), catheters, cauterisation and circumcision as "cures" - all done as painfully as possible. His views are very influential.
1843
Reform rabbis in Frankfurt question the need for physical circumcision. The controversy lasts for 20 years.
1854
Jonathan Hutchinson surveys his Jewish and gentile patients and decides circumcision prevents syphilis (but not, as the same data implies, that it promotes gonorrhoea)
April
7
In The Lancet (vol. 1: pp. 344-345), Athol A. W. Johnson promotes circumcision of boys with long foreskins to "cure" masturbation.
1860s
Circumcision as preventative of masturbation becomes UK medical dogma.
1861
English surgeon Isaac Baker Brown publishes the second edition of On Some Diseases of Women Admitting of Surgical Treatment with a section about "hypertrophy and irritation" of the clitoris leading to masturbation and recommending clitoridectomy as treatment comparable to circumcision.
1866
Isaac Baker Brown publishes a compendium of his cases. A heated debate arises in which the male and female genitalia are sharply distinguished (and the honour of women and the danger of doctors pronouncing on their virtue is an important factor) ...
1866
... leading to the expulsion of Isaac Baker Brown from the British Obstetrical Society and the repudiation of circumcision for females at the expense of males.
- R. Darby, A Surgical Temptation, p 298
1869
November
28
Approval by 13 Reform Jewish Rabbis who met in Philadelphia that: "... birth, and not circumcision, is the initiation into the Jewish religion."
- New York Times archives
1870
Lewis A. Sayre announces to the AMA that circumcision cures paralysis, epilepsy and masturbation, setting off the medical craze for "therapeutic" circumcision. His "circumcision" is, however, conservative, preserving as much tissue as possible. "Mutilation" was to be avoided.
1877
John Harvey Kellogg MD (1852-1943) publishes the first edition of "Plain facts for old and young: embracing the natural history and hygiene of organic life", in which child (but not infant) circumcision is promoted to "cure" masturbation.
1879
Neisser discovers the bacteria that cause gonnorrhoea, beginning the end of belief in "spermatorrhoea".
1881
July
2
Charles Guiteau shoots and kills President James A. Garfield. Phimosis and smegma buildup under his foreskin are blamed for his mental state.
1882
Norman H. Chapman, professor of nervous and mental disease at the University of Kansas City, writes in Medical News (Philadelphia) vol 41: p317 that "it is always good surgery to correct this deformity [a long and contracted foreskin]... as a precautionary measure, even though no symptoms have as yet presented themselves" ushering in routine circumcision.
1885
Dr Samuel Newman of New York advocates the circumcision of newborns. One of the advantages he claimd is that it can be done without anaesthetic, and he borrows the idea of strapping the baby to a board from the Indians.
1885
November
16
At the National Rabbinical Convention of the Reformed Hebrew Church in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Dr Kohler of New York, "denounced the rite of circumcision as a relic of barbarism."
- New York Times archives
The conference issued an eight-point platform that might be read as abandoning circumcision (e.g. that they "...maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization"), but did not explicitly do so.
late 1880s
The newly formed American Academy of Pediatrics joins Lewis Sayre's 1870 call for routine [neonatal] circumcision. Determined to lower the nation's infant mortality rate by reducing often-lethal diarrhoea, the AAP argues that the foreskin irritates the penis, which irritates the nervous system, which hampers digestion, which causes diarrhoea. (Simultaneously, the AAP also recommends against breast milk, saying it is a leading cause of infant diarrhoea. "Irritation" was a euphemism for sexual stimulation.)
1890
Herbert Snow publishes The barbarity of circumcision as a remedy for congenital abnormality, calling for "the abolition of an antiquated practice involving the infliction of very considerable suffering upon helpless infants; and sanctioned, on very questionable grounds, by men of eminent authority. ... no sane man who possessed the advantages of a sound and entire prepuce would willingly sacrifice it without just and sufficient cause being shown." - a man ahead of his time..
- R. Darby, A Surgical Temptation, p 301ff
1894
British-born but US-trained Elizabeth Blackwell denounces barbarity of circumcision, largely on ethical grounds.
1902
Peter C. Remondino publishes his influential "History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present. Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance...."
It is he who first declared that the foreskin was a relic of the time when man lived in "a wild state", and "in pursuit of either the juicy grasshopper or other small game, or of the female of his own species to gratify his lust, or in the frantic rush to escape the clutches, fangs, or claws of a pursuing enemy, he was obliged to fly and leap over thorny briars and bramble-bushes or hornets' nests or plunge through swamps alive with blood-sucking insects or leeches", that he needed "the protecting double fold of the preputial envelope that protected it from the thorns and cutting grasses, the coarse bark of trees, or the stings and bites of insects" but no longer needs it today - a claim that is still repeated today, though in somewhat less elaborate form.
1928
May
9-11
Dr Thomas Bolling Gay recommends routine infant circumcision to prevent phimosis and hence masturbation to the Med. Assoc of Georgia. His paper is published in JAMA July 21
1932
Jan
16
Abraham Leo Wolbarst's paper claiming that circumcision prevents cancer of the penis published in The Lancet (based on a few case reports of cancer in India and the US).
1934
Hiram S. ("Inch") Yellen, M.D. (1894-1969) and Aaron A. Goldstein (1899-1945) invent the GOMCO clamp.
late 1935
An extensive debate in the British Medical Journal shows doctors evenly divided. A J Faull suggests masturbation is harmless. R. Ainsworth suggests not trying to retract babies' foreskins. A H Williams is concerned that circumcision impairs the establishment ofbreastfeeding.
- R. Darby, A Surgical Temptation, p 304ff
1941
September
Alan Gutmacher writes in Parents' Magazine that some US doctors circumcise routinely without consulting parents, and that 75% of boys born in urban hospitals are circumcised.
1942
Aug
8
Battle of Guadalcanal. Mass circumcision of US soldiers in the Pacific in response to "an outbreak of phimosis and paraphimosis"! Military circumcisers Eugene A. Hand and Abraham Ravich promote circumcision to the masses through medical and popular journals after the war.
1942
Oct
23
Battle of El Alamein, allied offensive begins in Egypt, when some New Zealand (and other) soldiers are circumcised concurrently with widespread skin infection, giving rise to "sand under foreskin" myth. [Circumcision already heavily promoted in NZ, however.]
1946-7
British National Health Service set up, putting hospital doctors on salary and paying family doctors a flat rate per patient on their books. (Doctors were still free to circumcise, but they would no longer be paid any more for it.)
1949
Joseph Lewis's "In the Name of Humanity!" is published, perhaps the first outright condemnation of infant circumcision on humanitarian grounds.
1949
Dec
24
D. Gairdner's paper "The Fate of the Foreskin" is published in the BMJ. This, coupled with the non-funding, led to a dramatic fall in the rate of circumcision in the UK.
1950
July
2
US troops land in South Korea. Under US influence, South Korea adopts boyhood circumcison.
1962
National Women's Hospital opens in Auckland, New Zealand (official opening February 14, 1964), as a publicly-funded-circumcision-free zone. This leads to a dramatic fall in the rate of circumcision in NZ.
1965
July
19
JAMA publishes Morgan's "The Rape of the Phallus" the first criticism of circumcision's murky psychology.
1966
Apr
27
Bungled circumcision of "John Thiessen" (Bruce, now David, Reimer) in Winnipeg leading to his sex-reassignment surgery (see Dec 11, 1997).
1970
Dec
16
Van Lewis and his brother Ben carry signs saying "Infant Circumcision is a Sex Crime. Abolish it." "Sex Criminals for Hire? Inquire Within." "Abolish Infant Circumcision." and "Men's Liberation" outside the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, Tallahassee, Florida, and are arrested. They are charged with disturbing the peace and spend a day in the cells.
Van Lewis
in 2006
1971
American Academy of Pediatrics finds "no valid medical indications for routine infant circumcision."
1972
"Informed Consent" became required by law in the United States following the case of Canterbury v. Spence.
(Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772, 789 (D.C. Cir. 1972))
1985
Nurse Marilyn Milos is fired for advising parents against circumcision and founds NOCIRC (the Nat. Org. of Circumision Information Resource Centers).
Marilyn Fayre Milos
1988
March
California Med. Assoc. declares circumcision "an effective public health measure" on a voice vote, the resolution of urologist Aaron Fink.
1988
Dec
Canadian Paediatric Soc. reaffirms its stand against routine circumcision.
1989
Mar
1-3
First International Symposium on Circumcision, Anaheim, California adopts a declaration of bodily integrity.
1989
Mar
American Academy of Pediatrics suggests its 1971 stance on circumcision be re-examined, is widely misreported as having reversed its position.
1991
Apr
-
May
30
-
3
Second International Symposium on Circumcision, San Francisco, California. John Taylor describes the ridged band.
1992
More than 20 nurses of St Vincent Hospital, Santa Fe, NM, refuse to perform any more circumcisions. See what they say at YouTube.
1993
C. Maden et al.'s study of circumcision and cancer published in the JNCI. It showed penile cancer incidence (age for age) in proportion to circumcision and rising in proportion.
1993
Oct
Williams and Kapila's paper on risks and complications of circumcision is published in the BJS.
1994
January
Foreskin restoration list is started at M I T.
1994
May
22-25
1995
Feb
4
A. Taddio et al.'s first paper on circumcision pain published in The Lancet.
1995
Apr
Registered Nurses' Association of British Colombia votes to condemn routine infant circumcision of all sexes.
1995
Jun
Two of the nurses of St Vincent (see 1992), Mary Conant and Betty Katz Sperlich, found Nurses for the Rights of the Child.
1996
US outlaws FGM federally.
1996
R. Taylor et al.'s paper on the prepuce as specialised mucosa of the penis published in the B.J.Urol. It describes the highly innervated ridged bands.
1996
Canadian Paediatric Soc. Foetus and Newborn Cttee "does not support recommending circumcision as a routine procedure for newborns."
1996
Australian College of Paediatrics position statement: "...neonatal male circumcision has no medical indication..."
1996
Aug
11
Fourth International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations, Lausanne, Switzerland, passes the Ashley Montegu declaration and submits it to the World Court.
1997
Mar
1
A. Taddio et al.'s second paper on circumcision pain published in The Lancet. It shows pain of circumcision affects reaction to subsequent vaccination.
1997
Apr
2
Ed. O Laumann et al.'s study on circumcision and sexual practice and STDs published in JAMA. It shows circumcision does not prevent STDs, and correlates with more varied (stimulation-hungry?) sexual practice.
1997
Dec
J. Lander et al.'s paper on pain published in JAMA It shows the pain of circumcision to be excruciating, and circumcision without anaesthetic was discontinued in the study for ethical reasons.
1997
Dec
11
"Rolling Stone" blows the whistle on Dr John Money's attempt at surgical sex-determination of "John/Joan/John".
1997
Dec
28
Egyptian High Court upholds a lower court ban on FGM.
1998
Aug
5-7
Fifth International Symposium on Genital Mutilation held at Oxford, England.
1998
Oct
16
Highly publicised death of baby Dustin Evans Jr in Cleveland, Ohio, under anaesthetic during repair of circumcision complications. Doctors were at pains to distance his death from his circumcision.
1998
Dec
5
To, et al.'s study of UTIs shows it would take 195 circumcisions to prevent one UTI. You can see my graphic illustration of this figure.
1999
March
1
The American Associaton of Pediatrics issues a policy statement that the potential medical benefits of circumcision do not warrent performing it routinely, but that paediatricians may perform it at the parents' behest for "cultural, religious, and ethnic" reasons, and that analgesia is essential. On this site you can see that policy compared with their policy on Female Genital Mutilation.
1999
March
Medina General Hospital, Ohio, settles with parents who had sued for $10,000,000. Their son had the tip of his penis amputated during a "routine" circumcision..
1999
May
1
An English judge rules that a non-practising Muslim father may not have his son circumcised contrary to the mother's wishes, even though they had agreed to raise the child as Muslim. The ruling is upheld on November 26, the Court of Appeal saying "a newborn child does not share the conceptions of the parents" and "it [is] not in the best interests of the child to be circumcised, with its risk of pain and psychological damage which the boy would find hard to understand."
1999
November
20
The Lancet publishes Halperin and Bailey's editorial call for mass circumcision in Africa to prevent HIV spread. US media interpret it as a call for mass circumcision everywhere. Halperin tells the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco on November 25, "If I were a top [insertive partner in anal sex], and didn't like to use condoms, I would consider getting circumcised." - contradicting his own advice in the editorial.
1999
December
26
Western Australian court awards $A360,000 to Shane Peterson, a 26 year old Perth man whose infant circumcision was botched. Shane has written his own account of his experiences.
2000
February
"Circumcision of healthy boys: Criminal assault?" by Boyle, Svoboda, Price, & Turner published in the Journal of Law & Medicine
2000
March
8
2000
July
6
2000
October
11
2000
November
2000
December
7-9
Click for a larger image with names
2000
December
19
Settlement, April 25, 2003
2001
January
15
2001
January
16
2001
January
17
2001
January
25
2001
February
27
2001
April
1
2001
April
12
2001
May
11
Marilyn Fayre Milos
2001
June
1
2001
October
1
2001
November
1
2002
March-April
2002
July
2
2002
September
27
2002
October
1
2002
December
2002
December
1
2003
January
1
2003
February
15
2003
April
4
2003
April
25
William Stowell
2003
July
1
2004
February
3
2004
September
2005
July
1
2006
August
2007
March
2007
April
2008
September
2010
July