WikiAdmin: translated from English

2025-04-09T19:59:06Z

translated from English

WikiAdmin: created from English page; NYT

2025-03-06T16:41:16Z

created from English page; NYT

Neue Seite

{{NYT en}}
'''Epispasm''' is a word derived from ancient Greek, (''επισπασμοσ''), that means circumcision reversal or [[foreskin restoration]].<ref>{{REFweb
|url=https://www.yourdictionary.com/epispasm
|title=Epispasm
|last=
|first=
|accessdate=2020-07-17
}}</ref> Epispasm was popular in the First Century among [[circumcised]] Jewish men who wished to appear as [[intact]] Greek. The practice of epispasm seems to have persisted from the Second Century B. C. to the Sixth Century A. D.<ref name="hall1991">{{REFjournal
|last=Hall
|first=Robert
|init=R
|author-link=
|title=Epispasm: circumcision in reverse
|journal=Bible Review
|date=1992-08
|volume=
|issue=
|pages=52-7
|url=http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/hall1/
|accessdate=2020-07-17
}}</ref> Foreskin restoration is mentioned in the Apocryphal text of 1 Maccabees 14-15.<ref>{{REFweb
|url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Maccabees+1%3A14-15&version=NCB
|title=1 Maccabees 1-14-15
|last=
|first=
|init=
|publisher=Bible Gateway
|date=
|accessdate=2022-08-29
}}</ref>

==Lipodermos==

Hodges (2001) reported, ''Lipodermos'' is the name given by the Greeks to the condition of having a deficient [[foreskin]]. According to Hodges:
<blockquote>
Through the development of the concept of ''lipodermos'', Greek medicine gave to Greek civilization a scientific reinforcement of its disapproval of the violations of [[genital integrity]] occurring in the Near East. This ethos posited not only that a [[circumcised]] [[penis]] is a deviation from the natural — although that is of real importance — but that a [[circumcised]] penis is a defective and disfigured [[penis]], one that can be repaired by medical treatment. Medicine and law thereby entered into a mutually supportive relationship: [[circumcision]] was against the law because it mutilated its victims, but, taken to the next logical level in this medico-ethical argument, it was also against the law because it necessarily inflicted a state of ''lipodermos'' on its victims.<ref name="hodges2001">{{REFjournal
|last=Hodges
|first=Frederick M.
|init=FM
|author-link=Frederick M. Hodges
|etal=no
|title=The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and Their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesme
|trans-title=
|language=English
|journal=Bull. Hist. Med.
|location=
|date=2001-09
|volume=75
|issue=3
|pages=375-405
|url=http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/
|archived=
|quote=
|pubmedID=11568485
|pubmedCID=
|DOI=10.1353/bhm.2001.0119
|accessdate=2020-07-17
}}</ref></blockquote>

==Ancient surgical epispasm==

Hall reported that surgery was necessary for epispasm,<ref name="hall1991" /> however that is not correct.

==Ancient tissue expansion for epispasm==

Schultheiss et al. (1998) report that, in an alternative to the surgical procedures, a weight made of bronze, copper, or leather, called the ''Pondus Judaeus'', was attached to the residual foreskin that pulled the [[skin]] downward and stretched it which resulted in [[tissue expansion]].<ref name="schultheiss1998">{{REFjournal
|last=Schultheiss
|first=Dirk
|init=D
|author-link=
|last2=Truss
|first2=Michael C.
|init2=MC
|author2-link=
|last3=Stief
|first3=Christian G.
|init3=CG
|author3-link=
|last4=Jonas
|first4=Udo
|init4=U
|author4-link=
|etal=no
|title=Uncircumcision: a historical review of preputial restoration
|trans-title=
|language=
|journal=Plast Reconstr Surg
|location=
|date=1998-06
|volume=101
|issue=7
|pages=1990-8
|url=http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/schultheiss/
|archived=
|quote=
|pubmedID= 9623850
|pubmedCID=
|DOI=10.1097/00006534-199806000-00037
|accessdate=2020-07-17
}}</ref>

In Greek terminology, a person who had undergone the procedure of [[stretching]] the [[Foreskin|prepuce]] was known as ''epispastikós'', the stretched one (epispasmós = pull-over). Similarly, the Romans addressed him as ''recutitio'', the reskinned (cutis = [[skin]]), not differentiating by this term whether it was done surgically or nonsurgically.<ref name="schultheiss1998" />

==Epispasm in the present day==

The technique was lost but it was rediscovered in the late Twentieth Century by a group of American men who called themselves Brothers United for Future Foreskins ([[BUFF]]). Epispasm, now known as ''non-surgical foreskin [[restoration]]'', seems to be of ever-increasing popularity in the Twenty-first Century among [[circumcised]] men and even circumcised teenagers as young as 13 years of age.<ref>The popular REDDIT website has a sub-reddit for restoring teens that was started by a thirteen-year-old teen-age restorer. At least one other participant gives his age as thirteen.</ref>

{{SEEALSO}}
* [[Foreskin restoration]]
* [[Foreskin restoration information for circumcised teens]]

{{REF}}

[[Category:Education]]
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Foreskin restoration]]
[[Category:Judaism]]
[[Category:Physiology]]

[[en:Epispasm]]

Epispasmus - Versionsgeschichte

WikiAdmin: translated from English

WikiAdmin: created from English page; NYT