Rethinking the history of female circumcision and clitoridectomy: American medicine and female sexuality in the late nineteenth century

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 323-347

  Rodriguez, Sarah W ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

Clitoridectomy; Clitoris; Female circumcision; Female sexuality; Masturbation; Medical history

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CLITORIS; FEMALE; FEMALE CIRCUMCISION; HISTORY; HUMAN; MASTURBATION; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SEXUALITY;

CIRCUMCISION, FEMALE; CLITORIS; FEMALE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; MASTURBATION; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SEXUALITY;

EID: 46749127820     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: 14684373     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrm044     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. John O. Polak, "A Case of Nymphomania," Med. News, 4 September 1897, 71, 301-2.
2. Some of the published cases include: Wallace C. Abbott, "The Importance of Circumcision of the Female," Med. Council, 1904, 9, 427-42;
3. J. A. Burnett, "The Clitoris," The Regular Medical Visitor, 15 September 1903, 4, 201-3;
4. E. S. Cooper, "Removing the Clitoris in Cases of Masturbation, Accompanied with Treating Insanity," San Fran. Med. Press, January 1862, 3, 17-21;
5. J. S. Eastman, "Cure of Masturbation in a Woman by Neurectomy," Med. News, 12 August 1893, 63, 174;
6. Editorial, "Clitoridectomy," Southern J. Med. Sci., February 1867, 1, 794-95;
7. George J. Englemann, "Clitoridectomy," Am. Practitioner: Monthly J. Med. Surg., January 1882, 25, 1-12;
8. Egbert H. Grandin, "The Role of the Clitoris in the Production of Neuroses," Pediatrics, 15 February 1897, 3, 145-48;
9. Edwin M. Hale, "Two Cases of Imprisoned Clitoris," Homeopath. J. Obstet. Gynecol. Pediatr., 1896, 18, 446-49;
10. Joseph W. Howe, Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence (New York: Bermingham and Co., 1883);
11. Howard A. Kelly, Medical Gynecology (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908);
12. Robert T. Morris, "Circumcision in Girls," Int. J. Surg., May 1912, 25, 135-36;
13. Theophilus Parvin, "Nymphomania and Masturbation," Med. Age, 10 February 1886, 4, 49-51;
14. John O. Polak, "A Case of Nymphomania," Med. News, 1897, 71, 301-2;
15. J. A. Sutcliffe, "Excision of the Clitoris in a Child for Nymphomania," Indiana Med. J., September 1889, 8, 64-65;
16. Robert W. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders of the Male and Female (New York: Lea Bothers and Co., 1905);
17. A. S. Waiss, "Reflex Neurosis from Adherent Prepuce in the Female," Chicago Clin., 1900, 13, 279-83;
18. W. Gill Wylie, "Amputation of the Clitoris," Am. J. Obstet. Dis. Women Children, 1901, 43, 722.
19. For a complete citation, please see my dissertation, Sarah Webber, "The 'Unnecssary' Organ: Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States, 1865-1995" (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska Medical Center, 2005).
20. C. S. Bacon, "Adhesions of the Female Prepuce," Am. Gynaecolog. Obstetr. J., 1898, 12, 278-83, 355-35;
21. H. E. Beebe, "The Clitoris," J. Orificial Surg., 1897-1898, 6, 8-12;
22. A. J. Bloch, "Sexual Perversion in the Female," New Orleans Med. Surg. J., July 1894, 22, 1-7;
23. William Pawson Chunn, "A Case of Nymphomania," Maryland Med. J., 1887, 18, 121;
24. T. E. Costain, "Circumcision," J. Orificial Surg., 1900, 9, 158-69;
25. Belle C. Eskridge, "Why Not Circumcise the Girl as Well as the Boy?" Texas State J. Med., May 1918, 14, 17-19;
26. Alvin Eyer, "Clitoridectomy for the Cure of Certain Cases of Masturbation in Young Girls," Int. Med. Mag., 1894-1895, 3, 259-62;
27. Rowland G. Freeman, "Circumcision in the Masturbation of Female Infants," Transactions Pediatr. Assoc., 1914, 26, 57-60;
28. Carlton C. Frederick, "Nymphomania as a Cause of Excessive Venery," Am. J. Obstetr. Dis. Women Children, 1907, 56, 742-44;
29. C. B. Miller, "Masturbation," Am. Practitioner, May 1877, 15, 281-86;
30. Charles K. Mills, "A Case of Nymphomania," Med. Times, 18 April 1885, 15, 534-40;
31. Paul F. Munde, "Mental Disturbances in the Female Produced and Cured by Gynecological Operations," Am. Gynaecolog. Obstetr. J., 1898, 12, 51-55;
32. Anon., "Society Proceedings, Philadelphia County Medical Society Stated Meeting, December 28, 1887," Med. News, 14 January 1888, 52, 48.
33. Peter Feibleman, whose mother lost her clitoris when she was five in 1916, wrote that, during a conversation in the 1950s, a "second-generation gynecologist then in his eighties," told him performing clitoridectomy and female circumcision "had been a lucrative industry in the United States from 1867 until at least 1927, and possibly much later - a thriving business few people spoke about afterward." This is the only mention I have found of the operations being this popular. Feibleman, "Natural Causes," DoubleTake Mag., Winter 1997, www.fictionwriter.com/double.htm (accessed 2 February 2005).
34. Thomas Laqueur, "Amor Veneris, vel Dulcedo Appelletur," in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michael Feher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 91.
35. I first became interested in the history of these procedures in this country after I happened across a reference to clitoridectomy as a treatment for masturbation in a work of fiction. In the book, a white North American woman's clitoris was removed when she was a child in the early twentieth century in an attempt to stop her from masturbating. Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). At the time I had only heard of this procedure in reference to African women and girls, and I began searching for more occurrences in the United States, finding them in the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Library, Index Medicus, the online catalog for the National Library of Medicine, and James Ricci's One Hundred Years of Gynecology, 1800-1900. I also discovered references to other books and articles not cited in any of these sources within the references in other primary sources.
36. John Duffy, "Masturbation and Clitoridectomy: A Nineteenth-Century View," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 19 October 1963, 186, 246-48.
37. In particular, Ben Barker-Benfield, "The Spermatic Economy: A Nineteenth Century View of Sexuality," Fem. Studies, Summer 1972, 1, 45-74;
38. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America(New York: Harper & Row, 1976);
39. Ann Dally, Women Under the Knife: A History of Surgery (New York: Routledge, 1992).
40. See Judith M. Roy's article, "Surgical Gynecology," in Women, Health, & Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook, ed. Rima D. Apple (New York: Garland Publishing Company, 1990), 173-95;
41. and Regina Morantz, "The Lady and Her Physician," in Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women, ed. Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner (New York: Octagon Books, 1976), 38-53, for a more thorough discussion on the polemic arguments such as these that arose out of the 1970s with the view of gynecology as overt misogyny.
42. Not all scholarship on the history of female circumcision and clitoridectomy has been within the Victorian savagery framework. Edward Wallerstein and David Gollaher each spent a chapter on the history of female circumcision in their books on male circumcision, though they too only discussed two of the procedures performed on the clitoris. Edward Wallerstein, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1980);
43. David L. Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
44. For a longer discussion about the history of surgeries to the clitoris, see my dissertation, Sarah Webber, "The 'Unnecessary' Organ: Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States, 1865-1995" (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska Medical Center, 2005).
45. Laqueur, "Amor Veneris."
46. Susan Lawrence and Kae Bendixen, "His and Hers: Female Anatomy in Anatomy Texts for U.S. Medical Students, 1890-1989," Soc. Sci. Med., 1992, 35, 925-34;
47. Lisa Jean Moore and Adele E. Clarke, "Clitoral Conventions and Transgressions: Graphic Representations in Anatomy Texts, c. 1900-1991," Fem. Studies, 1995, 21, 255-301.
48. Additionally, Nancy Tuana has written about the past and present absence of knowledge about the clitoris. Nancy Tuana, "Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance," Hypatia, 2004, 19, 194-232.
49. Rachel Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," The Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 9-10.
50. Carol Groneman, Nymphomania: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), xxii.
51. Waiss, "Reflex Neuroses from Adherent Prepuce," 280.
52. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 8-12.
53. Moore and Clarke, "Clitoral Conventions and Transgressions;" Lawrence and Bendixen, "His and Hers."
54. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 8-12.
55. S. E. McCully, "Masturbation in the Female," Am. J. Obstet., 1883, 16, 845;
56. Moore and Clarke, "Clitoral Conventions and Transgressions;" and Lawrence and Bendixen, "His and Hers."
57. See also Thomas W. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), and Laqueur, "Amor Veneris," for more on the female body as lesser male body.
58. In the early modern sex manual, Aristotle's Master-Piece, the clitoris was "like that of the yard in men," and as the glans of the penis was the "seat of the greatest pleasure in copulation, so is this in women." Excerpted in Robert A. Nye, ed., Sexuality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 80.
59. Additionally, British midwife books published between 1671 and 1764 explicitly spoke to the erotic potential of the clitoris. See Robert A. Erickson, "'The Books of Generation': Some Observations on the Style of the British Midwife books, 1671-1764," in Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed/ Paul-Gabriel Bouce (Totowa, NJ: Manchester University Press, 1982), 74-93.
60. W. Greenfield, Marriage: Physiologically Discussed (New York: Printed for the Booksellers, 1839), reprinted in Eugéne Becklard and Jean Dubois, Sex for the Common Man: Nineteenth Century Marriage Manuals (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 22;
61. Samuel Ashwell, A Practical Treatise on the Diseases Peculiar to Women (Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1855), 501.
62. Leonard S. Rau, May's Diseases of Women, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers and Co., 1890), 40-41.
63. Byron Robinson, "The Clitoris," Interstate Med. J., January 1900, 7, 22.
64. Robert W. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders of the Male and Female (New York: Lea Brothers and Co., 1905), 414;
65. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 11.
66. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 11.
67. Cooper, "Removing the Clitoris," 19;
68. Hale, "Two Cases of Imprisoned Clitoris," 448.
69. Abbott, "Circumcision of the Female," 439.
70. Howe, Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence, 71-72.
71. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 11.
72. H. Tristram Englehardt, Jr., "The Disease of Masturbation: Values and the Concept of Disease," in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 13;
73. R. P. Newman, "Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adolescence," J. Soc. Hist., 1975, 8, 1-2, 5.
74. David L. Gollaher, "From Ritual to Science: The Medical Transformation of Circumcision in America," J. Soc. Hist., 1994, 28, 20.
75. Englehardt, "The Disease of Masturbation," 13-14, 16.
76. Newman, "Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood," 8.
77. Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (New York: Zone Books, 2003), 21, 202, 210.
78. Judith R. Walkowitz, "Dangerous Sexualities," in A History of Women: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War, vol. IV, ed. Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 370.
79. Nancy Sahli, "Sexuality and Woman's Sexual Nature," in Women, Health, and Medicine in America, ed. Rima D. Apple, 81-99;
80. Carl Degler, "What Ought to Be and What Was: Women's Sexuality on the Nineteenth Century," Am. Hist. Rev., 1974, 79, 1467-90.
81. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 9.
82. Laqueur, Making Sex, 227.
83. Gollaher, Circumcision, 79-80.
84. Edward Shorter, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (New York: Free Press, 1992), 20-23.
85. Abbott, "The Importance of Circumcision in the Female," 438.
86. Howard A. Kelly, Medical Gynecology (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), 292.
87. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 414, 422.
88. Robinson, "The Clitoris," 18-23.
89. William J. Robinson, Woman: Her Sex and Love Life (New York: Eugenics Publishing Co., 1959), 289.
90. J. M. Sligh, "Adherent Prepuce in the Female," Med. Sentinel, 1894, 2, 217.
91. Morris, "Circumcison in Girls," 127.
92. Bacon, "Adhesions of the Female Prepuce," 278-79.
93. Ibid., 215-16.
94. Kelly, Medical Gynecology, 298.
95. Hale, "Two Cases of Imprisoned Clitoris," 446.
96. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 12.
97. Waiss, "Reflect Neurosis from Adherent Prepuce," 281.
98. Beebe, "The Clitoris," 9.
99. Cooper, "Removing the Clitoris in Cases of Masturbation," 17-20.
100. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 417.
101. Groneman, Nymphomania, xxii.
102. Howe, Excessive Venery, 108-9;
103. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 415.
104. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 422.
105. Ibid., 422.
106. Ibid., 422.
107. Wylie, "Amputation of the Clitoris," 722.
108. Frederick, "Nymphomania as a Cause of Excessive Venery," 743-44.
109. Mills, "A Case of Nymphomania," 538-39.
110. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, 422.
111. Shorter, Paralysis to Fatigue, 208.
112. Englemann, "Clitoridectomy," 2-7, 11-12.
113. Munde, "Mental Disturbances in the Female," 53-55.
114. Mills, "A Case of Nymphomania," 534-35.
115. See Groneman, Nymphomania, 24-25, for a longer discussion about this patient and Mills.
116. Like many eras, there was diversity of thought on sexuality and sexual behavior. Free lovers, for instance, were never a large percentage of the population, but their existence means that one cannot write off the era as completely shunning sexuality outside marriage. See Jesse F. Battan, "'The World Made Flesh': Language, Authority, and Sexual Desire in Late Nineteenth-Century America," J. Hist. Sexuality, 1992, 3, 223-44.
117. Moreover, some women within the free love movement challenged the idea that sexual drive was purely a male act. See Ellen Carol DuBois and Linda Gordon, "Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth Century Feminist Sexual Thought," in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (New York: Pandora, 1989), 39-42.
118. Also see Carol Zisowitz Stearns and Peter Stearns, "Victorian Sexuality: Can Historians Do It Better?" J. Soc. Hist., 1985, 18, 624-34;
119. and Sahli, "Sexuality and Woman's Sexual Nature," for a more thorough discussion of the complexities around looking at sexuality in the late nineteenth century.
120. Erotica, however, was not. See The Pearl (originally published as a serial in 1879) for an example of erotica published during this time. Anon., The Pearl: A Magnus Opus of Victorian Erotica (New York: Carroll & Graf Fiction, 1999).
121. For a discussion on erotica during the nineteenth century, see Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
122. Nineteenth century marriage manuals implicitly argued for the importance of sex in marriage but couched the argument in terms of control and regulation, with some skeptical about the depth of female sexual needs. John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 266-67.
123. While there were advisors who recommended that sex remain within the confines of a desire for children, others saw benefits of sex where procreation was prevented as a part of a healthy marriage. Anita Claire Fellman and Michael Fellman, "The Rule of Moderation in Late Nineteenth-Century American Sexual Ideology," J. Sex Res., 1981, 17, 238-55.
124. Henry Guernsey, Plain Talk on Avoided Subjects (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Co., 1907), 95-96.
125. Fellman and Fellman, "The Rule of Moderation," 251;
126. Guernsey, Plain Talk, 92-95.
127. James Kent, Sexual Neuroses (St. Louis: Maynard & Tedford, 1879), 21.
128. Perry thought that if women's "rights were properly attended to at home there would be less talk of women's rights at the ballot-box and less violation of the civil code." Apparently, women owe a good deal to bad sex at the turn of the last century. Ralph Perry, "Sexual Hunger as a Factor in Diseases of Women," Am. Journal Dermatol. Genito-urinary Dis., 1899, 3, 6.
129. G. Kolischer, "Sexual Frigidity in Women," Am. J. Obstet. Dis. Women Children, 1905, 32, 416.
130. Rufus Griswold, "Some Observations on the Physiology of Coitus from the Female Side of the Matter," Clin. News, 1880, 1, 449.
131. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 172.
132. Eugene P. Bernardy, "One of the Causes of Aneroticism in Women," Proceedings, Philadelphia Co. Med. Soc., 1894, 15, 426-28.
133. Bacon, "Adhesions of the Female Prepuce," 279;
134. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorder, 414.
135. Taylor, A Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorder, 414.
136. Robert T. Morris, Lectures on Appendicitis, and Notes on Other Subjects (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1897), 130.
137. Douglas H. Stewart, "Circumcision of the Preputium Clitoridis," Am. Practitioner News, 1912, 10, 216-17.
138. Waiss, "Reflex Neuroses from Adherent Prepuce in the Female," 282-83.
139. Bernardy, "One of the Causes of Aneroticism in Women," 426-28.
140. Eugene P. Bernardy, "Report of a Case of Aneroticism in Women," Med. Council, 1896, 1, 51-52.
141. Abbott, "The Importance of Circumcision," 438.
142. For an interesting look at how kleptomania was also made into a disease to explain aberrant behavior, see Elaine S. Abelson, "The Invention of Kleptomania," in Women and Health in America, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 390-404.
143. Sarah Webber and Toby Schonfeld, "Cutting History, Cutting Culture: Female Circumcision in the United States," Am. J. Bioeth., 2003, 3, 65-66.