Puberty immediately succeeds childhood and attends us to the end of our days. Till this period arrives the sole object of Nature seems to have been the growth and preservation of her work. She supplies the infant with nothing but what is necessary for its bodily increase. Wrapped up, as it were, within itself, its existence, in some respects, resembles that of a vegetable, and which it has not the power to communicate. Presently, however, the principles of life multiply; and it not only possesses what is necessary for its own being but sufficient to give existence to others. This superabundance of life, this source of strength and vigour, impatient of its internal restraint, vents itself abroad, and the age of puberty is announced by a number of external and internal marks; it is the spring of life and the season of pleasure. Of that age may we be enabled to write the history with such circumspection as to excite in the imagination none but philosophical ideas! Puberty, however, and the circumstances that accompany it, as circumcision, castration, virginity, and impotency, are of too essential consequence in the History of Man to allow a suppression of facts to which they relate. In giving a detail of them we shall endeavour to maintain that modest reserve which constitutes the true decorum of style, that philosophical apathy which may destroy loose ideas, and give it in words confined to their literal import and original signification.
Circumcision is a custom very ancient, and which still subsists in the greatest part of Asia. Among the Hebrews this operation was performed within eight days after the birth. In Turkey they never perform it before the age of seven or eight years, and often not even till that of eleven or twelve. In Persia, the practice is general at the age of five or six. The wound thus occasioned is healed with caustic or astringent powders, or with burned paper, which, according to Chardin, is the most effectual remedy; he adds, that circumcision is attended with infinite pain when performed on grown persons; that they cannot stir abroad after it for three weeks or a month, and that sometimes it proves fatal to them.
In the Maldivia islands they circumcise their children at the age of seven; and previous to this operation they bathe them in the sea for six or seven hours, in order to render their skin more soft. The Israelites made use of a sharpened flint, a custom which the Jews still continue in most of their synagogues. The Mahometans, however, use a common knife, or a razor.