[ ARC forum 2 ]

A very messy business

Written by Paul B. at 06 May 2003 13:27:57:

As an answer to: Re: "Scar tissue" written by Rood at 06 May 2003 04:49:17:

> It's not the scar 'line' that is in question. This fellow is saying that all of his inner and outer foreskin were removed, PLUS about an inch of his shaft skin below the sulcus. Evidently his penis was literally 'stripped' down to the spongy tissue of the corpora or to whatever sleeve encases them.

It's a very strange story to be sure, but the history of circumcision, notably in the last century and a part, is truly bizarre, indicating just how little has really been learnt about making rational scientific decisions as against belief in "magic" of some form or another.

It happens I attended a lecture course one afternoon last weekend, on management of skin cancer, and the point was rather forcefully made, that "healing by secondary intent", that is, leaving a wound open and allowing it to heal from the edges - essentially with scar tissue, is a quite valid approach to circumstances where it is simply impractical to pull the edges together, or use a skin graft, indeed is often cosmetically better than a skin graft. And I personally bear a mark from childhood, almost invisible by now, to bear witness to that.

Of course, the context of this statement, was in reference to cancer which quite obviously must be removed. There are certainly other circumstances where it may not be possible to obtain closure after an operation and the vast majority of operations are of course necessitated by disease which threatens the normal enjoyment of life if not life itself.

I cannot - have never been able to - countenance that a person of any reasonable intelligence, could in the absence of psychopathology, believe that there could be a "medical" rationale for infant (or childhood) circumcision. But I also know only too well that such psychopathology exists, and is not uncommon. Let me put it quite bluntly - Evil is real - indeed very real. Those who fail to perceive this, will be hard put to understand either this, or indeed much of life.

In summary, notwithstanding by whatever evil motive a doctor might have done this, yes it is entirely plausible that it occurred, and yes, the result would be an area of heavily scarred skin. Such skin would be perhaps three or five times more difficult then normal skin, but not impossible, to stretch.

It would certainly require continuous stretching, that is almost 24 hours a day, because that is the method employed nowadays by "pressure suits" for severe burn victims. Most certainly skin growth occurs in consequence of normal (nocturnal) erections, but equally, this is a proportional matter and where major skin loss has occurred, the skin will be tighter.

As to the matter of the penile shaft structure, I shall just review that the primary erectile bodies, the corpora cavernosae, have a particularly tough "tunica" which like a bicycle tyre, limits the expansion of the spongy body (inner tube) inside and provides rigidity, so you would not see the spongy material as such when the shaft was denuded.

The corpus spongiosum surrounding the urethra (and also forming the glans itself) has a much more elastic tunic which allows it to still be compressible when erect. Actually, given that it is filled with fluid, it it not actually compressible of itself, but when one part is pressed, the remainder is able to expand against the elastic tunic, and recoil afterward. This is part of the mechanism that propels the semen so dramatically at ejaculation.

You could almost say that when you look at the glans, you are looking at the spongy material through a thin skin cover.


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