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Picture of a young boy being prepared for a ritual circumcision.
XCIRCUM
by J. Michael Mahoney
(with apologies to W.S.)
To cut, or not to cut—that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The scalpels and razors of outrageous surgeons
Or to take arms against a sea of CIRCUMCISERS
And by opposing end them. To defy, to protest—
No more—and by a protest to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand unnatural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To defy, to protest—
To protest, perchance to prevail; ay, there's no rub,
For in that protest of defiance the prevailing may come
When we no longer shuffle off this mortal prepuce,
Must give them pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of violating Nature.
For who would bear the barbarism and
atavism of circumcision,
The priest's wrong, the proud doctor's false hygiene,
The pangs of unlubricated love, the law's indifference,
The insolence of ritualism, and the spurns
That patient child endures as the unworthy takes,
When it itself must later better make
With a full bodkin? Who would circumcision bear,
To grunt and sweat over a weary wife,
But that the dread of something worse than death,
The undiscovered castration, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus cowardice does make capons of us all,
And thus the native hue of intelligence
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of primitivism
And phalli of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of being civilized. —Soft you now,
The fair n'Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy embraces
Be all my mutilations remembered.
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Please refer to William Shakespeare's HAMLET, Act lll,
sc. 1, lines 47 through 56, beginning with "To be, or not to be: that
is the question:" |
Dear Reader:
The attached article on circumcision was written by the late Dr. John M. Foley, of Frankford, West Virginia. It appeared in the July-August 1966 issue of FACT magazine.
Dr. Foley was born in 1918 and died in 1968 of a heart attack. He graduated from the medical college of Virginia in Richmond in 1950 and received his license to practice medicine in 1951. He was in general practice in the Frankford area and had a secondary specialty in internal medicine.
Please Click Here to Finish Reading the Article.
To read the article "Psychological Effects of Circumcision" By Gocke Cansever Click Here.
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