
What sensations are cut off with the prepuce?
The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and has had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened.
Moses Maimonides
Moses Maimonides
Skin is the largest sensory organ with many different receptors.[i] Along with the foreskin at a proper circumcision a man bravely loses more than 3 feet of blood vessels, 240 feet of nerves, and more than 20,000 nerve endings.1[ii] Generally, we associate skin sensitivity with the sense of touch. A closer examination reveals that the sense of touch is a complex sensation resulting from the combined action of many different receptors and their corresponding cortical areas.
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- H. C. Bazett et al., “Depth, Distribution and Probable Identification in the Prepuce of Sensory End-Organs Concerned in Sensations of Temperature and Touch; Themometic Conductivity”, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 27 (1932): 489-517 [↩]