What were the cultural, religious, and racial arguments used to promote circumcision in the US during Kellogg's era?
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Executive summary
During John Harvey Kellogg’s era (late 19th to early 20th century) circumcision was promoted in the United States through a mix of cultural hygiene rhetoric, religiously inflected moralism, and racially tinged eugenic thinking; physicians framed the operation as a sanitary, preventive medical intervention that would curb masturbation and preserve social order [1] [2] [3]. Scholars caution that Kellogg’s role has been both amplified and mythologized—he was a prominent advocate of anti-masturbation remedies including circumcision, but the broader medicalization of circumcision involved multiple actors and transatlantic influences [4] [5] [6].
1. Medical hygiene and the rhetoric of cleanliness: circumcision as modern sanitary practice
Victorian and Progressive‑era doctors marketed circumcision as part of a modern hygiene project, arguing the removal of the foreskin reduced disease, improved cleanliness, and fit the era’s close linkage of physical health with moral rectitude—a narrative that helped rebrand an ancient ritual into a fashionable medical procedure [1] [7]. Medical journals and public health advocates touted sanitary benefits and infection prevention, and that framing made circumcision intelligible to physicians and parents seeking “modern” preventive care [7] [8].
2. Moral panic and masturbation: sexual anxiety as a driver of surgical advocacy
A central cultural argument was that circumcision would prevent masturbation (“onanism”), which leading physicians of the day blamed for a wide array of physical and mental ills; Kellogg himself recommended circumcision and other harsh measures as effective remedies against self‑abuse, reflecting a clinical crusade against perceived sexual deviance [2] [3] [9]. Contemporary anti‑masturbation rhetoric fused medical language with moral judgment, turning private sexual behavior into a public‑health emergency that justified surgical intervention [1] [10].
3. Religion and moral reform: Protestant asceticism given medical authority
Kellogg and others merged Protestant-derived asceticism with medical authority, translating theological anxieties about purity into prescriptions for the body; his Seventh‑day Adventist background informed a broader health‑reform project in which diet, temperance, and genital regulation were moralized medical practices [5] [4]. While some defenders couch circumcision in scientific terms, historical accounts show religious moralism remained a potent subtext driving acceptance among lay audiences [5] [1].
4. Racialized and eugenic undertones: purity, degeneration, and social hierarchies
Advocates’ language sometimes slid into racialized and eugenic thinking: leaders of the hygiene movement, including Kellogg, later embraced eugenic ideas about improving populations and segregating undesirable traits, and public health campaigns could implicitly or explicitly position surgical normalization of bodies within hierarchies of race and fitness [4] [5]. Sources document Kellogg’s involvement in eugenics and segregation later in life, which helps explain how medical interventions like circumcision could be folded into broader projects of social engineering [4].
5. Commercial, institutional, and transatlantic dynamics that amplified the message
Kellogg was part of a transatlantic network of health reformers who adapted European practices and lent institutional credibility to circumcision through sanitarium medicine, publications, and lecturing, but he was one of several influential figures rather than the sole originator of the American trend [5] [6]. Secondary actors—medical societies, surgeons like Lewis Sayre, wartime military surgeons, and later public‑health campaigns—helped routinize circumcision into hospital practice and popular expectation [8] [7].
6. Caveats, contested legacy, and alternative interpretations
Historians warn against simplistic origin stories that single out Kellogg as the inventor of routine circumcision in America; research shows a complex medicalization process with competing motives—hygiene, moral reform, professionalization of medicine, and sometimes explicit eugenics—while modern reassessments label many of the original justifications as scientifically flawed or morally suspect [4] [6] [2]. Some contemporary accounts emphasize how physicians’ authority and cultural anxieties—not only individual zealotry—produced a durable practice that later generations would reexamine [6] [8].