Abstract
THE need for detailed monographs on genital mutilations has long been felt, and above all a sound and scholarly treatment of circumcision was desirable. This book, however, scarcely fulfils that want. It is a very general account of a number of different operations, but is without orderly plan, and the author has clearly been unable to deal satisfactorily even with the limited number of authorities he quotes, or to appreciate the vast distribution of the practices under discussion. Instead of confining himself to the matter on hand, he wanders off to discuss male infibulation, ampliatio vaginœ, perforation of the clitoris, and many other similar practices. The result of this is that the author becomes lost in his own maze: the very multiplicity of the customs bewilders him, and he ends by coming to few new conclusions at all. He quotes largely from Biblical sources, whilst failing to realise that the ideas of earlier civilisations were better worth his ink. Whilst rightly rejecting Reitzenstein's attempts to find evidence for circumcision in palæolithic times, he fails to understand that the ritual significance of the custom is the point on which his attention should have been focused.
Die Beschneidung bei Mann und Weib: ihre Geschichte, Psychologie und Ethnologie.
Von Felix Bryk. (Monographien zur Ethno-Psychologie, herausgegeben von F. Bryk und C. L. Hansen, Band 1.) Pp. x + 319. (Neubrandenburg: Gustav Feller, 1931.) 15.60 gold marks.
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DINGWALL, E. Die Beschneidung bei Mann und Weib: ihre Geschichte, Psychologie und Ethnologie . Nature 128, 91 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128091a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128091a0