[Early 19th century. Via Latin from Greek smēgmal “soap,” from smēkhein “to rub, cleanse.”]
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_18617 ... megma.html
The smegma issue's funny - women produce smegma also - it's a natural lubricant that has immunological properties. It also smells strong sometimes.
If left for a long period of time, it can build up and cause irritation, and is a likely contributing factor to penile cancer (which is an extraordinarily rare disease of old men).
But you'd need to be really unlucky, AND not clean yourself at all for periods of months, in order to be at risk for penile cancer, imo.
We teach our women to clean their vaginas - we teach everyone to clean their anuses (though I'd like to see more bidet action) - why the fuck do we think we can't teach our kids to clean their penises.
The penile cancer rate in North America is higher than in Denmark, where circumcision rates are below 1% (iirc) - that tells you something.
If you look at the history of medical rationales for circumcision, you see an interesting pattern - the most feared diseases have been associated with an intact penis:
masturbation was a HUGE issue back in the victorian days - the days of chastity belts and the like - north america had some serious sexual hangups, and masturbation was the cancer, or aids, of the time.
Take a look at this, for an example of the common cultural and medical wisdom associated with self gratification:
Doctors actually BELIEVED this shit!
So when circumcision was touted as a cure for masturbation, it caught on like wildfire, especially for the middle and upper class folks.
Then it was urinary tract disease that was the focus - eventually this was shown to be based on extremely flawed scientific methodology.
Then there was the penile cancer/cervical cancer in intact male's partners - again this was shown to be overbown hysteria (I've read that it has been estimated that more people die from complications of circumcision than of penile cancer - though not sure about this claim.)
Now of course it's the HIV - it's amazing to see educated people touting circumcision as a virtual vaccination against HIV - absolute nonsense. It may provide some protection (the latest clinical study showed a 1.5-2 fold increase in protection from circumcision I think) - but that alone does not justify routine neonatal circumcision.
It is a peculiar feature of each society, throughout all ages, that everyone believes that the culture is more rational, civilized, and less barbaric, than in the past. Yet in hindsight, there are always things that people look back upon and go "omg, i can't believe they did that". It takes a lot of effort to think outside the box of one's own culture and time, and experience this shift in consciousness before others do. Usually people who do this are shunned by society - think back to the catholic church burning all those scientists and philosophers for supposing that the earth orbited the sun.
People used to take their families to watch innocent women being publicly tortured to death. It was considered a normative practice. It probably never crossed many people's minds that this was atrocious. Prejudice and superstition around certain behaviours, or physical appearances, along with a blindspot to the horror of human suffering, allowed these practices to survive. We think very differently now, at least with respect to witches.
I think it's a great exercise to examine our own culture, and examine what people 200 years from now might think about us. It can be disconcerting to do this, but I believe it's essential.
enlightened