Editing Female genital mutilation (section)

===Europe and the United States===
[[File:Isaac Baker Brown.jpg|thumb|left|alt=portrait|[[Isaac Baker Brown]] "set to work to remove the clitoris whenever he had the opportunity of doing so".<ref name=Allen2000p106/>]]
Some gynaecologists in 19th-century Europe and the United States removed the clitoris to treat insanity and masturbation.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2008}} A British doctor, Robert Thomas, suggested clitoridectomy as a cure for [[nymphomania]] in 1813.<ref>{{harvnb|Thomas|1813|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=yK9YAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA585 585–586]}}; {{harvnb|Shorter|2008|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=I87S-xL6Q1wC&pg=PA82 82]}}.</ref> In 1825 ''[[The Lancet]]'' described a clitoridectomy performed in 1822 in Berlin by [[Karl Ferdinand von Graefe]] on a 15-year-old girl who was masturbating excessively.<ref>{{harvnb|Elchalal|Ben-Ami|Gillis|Brzezinski|1997}}; {{harvnb|Shorter|2008|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=I87S-xL6Q1wC&pg=PA82 82]}}.</ref>

[[Isaac Baker Brown]], an English gynaecologist, president of the [[Medical Society of London]] and co-founder in 1845 of [[St Mary's Hospital, London|St. Mary's Hospital]], believed that masturbation, or "unnatural irritation" of the clitoris, caused [[female hysteria|hysteria]], spinal irritation, fits, idiocy, mania, and death.{{sfn|Elchalal|Ben-Ami|Gillis|Brzezinski|1997}} He, therefore "set to work to remove the clitoris whenever he had the opportunity of doing so", according to his obituary.<ref name=Allen2000p106>{{harvnb|J. F. C.|1873|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=gZ4EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA155 155]}}, cited in {{harvnb|Allen|2000|loc=[https://archive.org/details/wagesofsinsexdis00alle/page/106 106].}}</ref> Brown performed several clitoridectomies between 1859 and 1866.<ref name=Allen2000p106/> In the United States, [[J. Marion Sims]] followed Brown's work and in 1862 slit the [[cervix|neck of a woman's uterus]] and amputated her clitoris, "for the relief of the nervous or hysterical condition as recommended by Baker Brown".{{sfn|McGregor|1998|loc=146}} When Brown published his views in ''On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy, and Hysteria in Females'' (1866), doctors in London accused him of quackery and expelled him from the [[Obstetrical Society]].<ref>{{harvnb|Sheehan|1981|loc=14}}; {{harvnb|Black|1997|loc=405}}.</ref>

Later in the 19th century, A. J. Bloch, a surgeon in New Orleans, removed the clitoris of a two-year-old girl who was reportedly masturbating.{{sfn|Hoberman|2005|loc=[https://archive.org/details/testosteronedrea00hobe/page/63 63]}} According to a 1985 paper in the ''Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey'', clitoridectomy was performed in the United States into the 1960s to treat hysteria, erotomania and lesbianism.<ref>{{harvnb|Cutner|1985}}, cited in {{harvnb|Nour|2008}}. Also see {{harvnb|Barker-Benfield|1999|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=0QKUAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA113 113]}}.</ref> From the mid-1950s, [[James C. Burt]], a gynaecologist in Dayton, Ohio, performed non-standard repairs of [[episiotomy|episiotomies]] after childbirth, adding [[Husband stitch|more stitches]] to make the vaginal opening smaller. From 1966 until 1989, he performed "love surgery" by cutting women's [[pubococcygeus muscle]], repositioning the vagina and urethra, and removing the clitoral hood, thereby making their genital area more appropriate, in his view, for intercourse in the [[missionary position]].{{sfn|Rodriguez|2014|loc=149–153}} "Women are structurally inadequate for intercourse," he wrote; he said he would turn them into "horny little mice".<ref>{{cite news|last1=Wilkerson|first1=Isabel|title=Charges Against Doctor Bring Ire and Questions|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/11/us/charges-against-doctor-bring-ire-and-questions.html|work=The New York Times|date=11 December 1988|access-date=10 February 2018|archive-date=16 August 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090816081427/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health|url-status=live}}{{pb}}
{{cite news|last1=Donaldson James|first1=Susan|title=Ohio Woman Still Scarred By 'Love' Doctor's Sex Surgery|url=http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ohio-woman-writes-book-love-doctor-mutilated-sex/story?id=17897317|work=ABC News|date=13 December 2012|ref=none|access-date=6 February 2018|archive-date=6 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806025518/https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ohio-woman-writes-book-love-doctor-mutilated-sex/story?id=17897317|url-status=live}}</ref> In the 1960s and 1970s he performed these procedures without consent while repairing episiotomies and performing hysterectomies and other surgery; he said he had performed a variation of them on 4,000 women by 1975.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2014|loc=149–153}} Following complaints, he was required in 1989 to stop practicing medicine in the United States.<ref>{{cite news|title=Doctor Loses Practice Over Genital Surgery|work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/26/us/doctor-loses-practice-over-genital-surgery.html|agency=Associated Press|date=26 January 1989|access-date=10 February 2018|archive-date=31 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200831233712/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/26/us/doctor-loses-practice-over-genital-surgery.html|url-status=live}}</ref>