That such cases would suggest circumcision is not only probable but possible, as it would point out the manner of performing the operation; but, in the cases of the Australian savages, who performed an artificial hypospadias on themselves for a specific purpose, requiring a knowledge of the anatomical relation of the parts as well as of their physiological functions, it is hard to speculate how the operation was first suggested or how it came at first to be performed. As a Malthusian agent it is certainly an operation of the highest merit, and it should be introduced, by all means, in the United States, where the wealth and luxury in which the people dwell is fast drifting them toward the same whirlpool that engulfed Rome, which was preceded by a dislike to have children. Whenever the writer sees the poor anæmic, broken-down victim of many miscarriages, he cannot help but feel that, if the laws of the Damiantina River savages were enforced on their husbands, it would be a blessing to the poor women without materially injuring the husbands, who, in case of need of a re-establishment of the functions of procreation, might be fitted with a vulcanite plate for the occasion,--something like our cleft-palate patients are supplied with a plate that enables them to articulate.
It was the custom among the Hottentots, when first discovered or known to the whites, to remove one of their testicles. This was supposed to enable them to run more swiftly and to be lighter-footed in the race. The real reason, afterward found, was a mixture of pure humanitarianism and Malthusianism boiled down to Hottentot ethics. With them a monorchid was not supposed to beget twins; when twins are born in the family, the mother generally smothers the female, if one happens to be such; if not, then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy, generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary civilized white man would not do, even if his legitimate wife and all his outside concubines were to have twins or triplets every nine months; so that, even as strange as it may appear, civilization must need go to the wild Bushmen in search of that grand old Quixotic chivalry that was in ancient times always ready to sacrifice itself for the welfare of woman.