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The objective of this study was to determine whether the justifications given for promoting mass circumcision as a preventive measure for HIV infection are reasonable and whether mass circumcision is a feasible preventive measure for HIV infection in developing countries.The medical literature concerning the practice of circumcision in the absence of medical indication was reviewed regarding its impact on HIV infection and related issues. The literature was analysed with careful attention to historical perspective.Our results show that the medical literature supporting mass circumcision for the prevention of HIV infection is inconsistent and based on observation studies. Even if the two ongoing randomised controlled trials in Africa show a protective benefit of circumcision, factors such as the unknown complication rate of the procedure, the permanent injury to the penis, human rights violations and the potential for veiled colonialism need to be taken into account. Based on the best estimates, mass circumcision would not be as cost-effective as other interventions that have been demonstrated to be effective.Even if effective, mass circumcision as a preventive measure for HIV in developed countries is difficult to justify. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The medical term phimosis has been in use since antiquity, but in contrast to the imprecise definition of the term that is characteristic of nineteenth-century and some controversial modern medical writing, Greek and Roman medical writers imbued it with a clinically precise definition. Using the tools of the history of medicine, an analysis of the medical writings of antiquity reveals that phimosis was defined exclusively as a rare, inflammatory or cicatricial stricture of the preputial orifice consequent to a true pathological condition rather than a disease process in itself. Putative associations between phimosis and diseases such as urinary tract infections or cancer were not made in antiquity and are reflections of modern, geographically isolated social anxieties. The modern European scientific conceptualisation of phimosis, however, represents a return to the precise terminology and conservative therapeutic approach characteristic of Greek and Roman medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]