Word: foreskins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with rubies and emeralds. It is traditionally believed to contain the only relic left on earth by Jesus Christ. True, Christ ascended bodily into heaven before the eyes of the astonished Apostles after his resurrection. But he had been circumcised in the temple as an infant, and the Holy Foreskin, preserved by a succession of devout guardians, is said to have found its way eventually into the sanctum sanctorum of the Vatican. A German mercenary laid his rude hands on it during the Sack of Rome in 1527 and stole it away; it was lost for 30 years and then...
Circumcision, the ancient rite of Jews and Moslems, is now performed on 80% of all American male infants. Several doctors have recently revived an old question: Is this snip necessary? In learned articles the skeptics argue that removing the foreskin is neither hygienic nor otherwise helpful. They also claim-but have not proved-that it reduces male sexual pleasure...
...comes Jack Harnes, a Manhattan internist, who persuaded, the staid Journal of the American Medical Association to publish what may be the last word on the subject. In "The Foreskin Saga," Harnes puts the "debate" into perspective in a strikingly successful spoof of the ponderous,reports that usually appear in medical publications (among earlier titles of serious articles: "The Rape of the Phallus," "Penile Plunder"). Believing that the circumcision controversy is ludicrous and the sensual argument unprovable, Harnes merely concocted some insights and phony research...
...operations are more common in the U.S. than circumcision-the surgical removal of the foreskin covering the penis. Once it was practiced mainly by Jews and Moslems, whose reasons are religious,* not medical. Now it is so widely accepted as a hygienic measure that 80% of all American baby boys are circumcised shortly after birth...
Preston readily agrees with the argument that an uncircumcised penis is more difficult to keep clean than one from which the foreskin has been removed. But this, he feels, does not justify the risks of an operation that he considers little better than mutilation. "If a child can be taught to tie his shoes or brush his teeth or wash behind his ears," says Preston, "he can also be taught to wash beneath his foreskin...