Infant circumcision was taken up in the United States, Australia and the English-speaking parts of Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom. There are several hypotheses to explain why infant circumcision was accepted in the United States about the year 1900. The germ theory of disease elicited an image of the human body as a conveyance for many dangerous germs, making the public "germ phobic" and suspicious of dirt and bodily secretions. The penis became "dirty" by association with its function, and from this premise circumcision was seen as preventative medicine to be practised universally.[23] In the view of many practitioners at the time, circumcision was a method of treating and preventing masturbation.[23] Aggleton wrote that John Harvey Kellogg viewed male circumcision in this way, and further "advocated an unashamedly punitive approach."[24] Circumcision was also said to protect against syphilis,[25] phimosis, paraphimosis, balanitis, and "excessive venery" (which was believed to produce paralysis).[23] Gollaher states that physicians advocating circumcision in the late nineteenth century expected public scepticism, and refined their arguments to overcome it.[23]
