MUTILATIONS OF THE SEXUAL ORGANS.

Mutilations of the sexual organs
are more ethnically important than any.

They have played a great part in human history, and still have much significance in many countries.
Their antiquity is undoubtedly great, and nearly all originate with the idea of initiation into full sexual life.
The most important, circumcision, has been transformed into a religious rite.

Infibulation (Lat. fibula, a clasp), or the attaching a ring, clasp, or buckle to the sexual organs, in females through the labia majora, in males through the prepuce, was an operation to preserve chastity very commonly practised in antiquity.
At Rome it was in use; Strabo says it was prevalent in Arabia and in Egypt, and it is still native to those regions (Lane, Modern Egyptians, i. 73; Arabic Lexicon, s.v. "hafada").
Niebuhr heard that it was practised on both shores of the Persian Gulf and at Bagdad (Description de l'Arabie, p. 70).
It is common in Africa (see Sir H. H. Johnston, Kilimanjaro Expedition, 1886), but is there often replaced by an operation which consists in stitching the labia majora together when the girl is four or five years old.

Castration is practised in the East to supply guards for harems, and was employed in Italy until the time of Pope Leo XIII. to provide "soprani" for the papal choir; it has also been voluntarily submitted to from religious motives (see Eunuch).
The operation has, however, been resorted to for other purposes.

Thus in Africa it is said to have been used as a means of annihilating conquered tribes.
The Hottentots and Bushmen, too, have the curious custom of removing one testicle when a boy is eight or nine years old, in the belief that this partial emasculation renders the victim fleeter of foot for the chase.

The most dreadful of these mutilations is that practised by certain Australian tribes on their boys.
It consists of cutting open and leaving exposed the whole length of the urethral canal and thus rendering sexual intercourse impossible.
According to some authorities it is hatred of the white man and dread of slavery which are the reasons of this racial suicide.
Among the Dyaks and in many of the Melanesian islands curious modes of ornamentation of the organs (such as the kalang) prevail, which are in the nature of mutilations.  

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