One was to make an opening into the male urethra just anterior to the scrotum, and another was to slit up the entire urethra so far as to make but a single canal from the scrotum to the glans penis.

Bourke quotes Palmer in mentioning that it is a custom to split the urethra of the male of the Kalkadoon tribe, near Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia Mayer of Vienna describes an operation of perforation of the penis among the Malays; and Jagor and Micklucho-Maclay report similar customs among the Dyaks and other natives of Borneo, Java, and Phillipine Islands.
Circumcision is a rite of great antiquity.

The Bible furnishes frequent records of this subject, and the bas-reliefs on some of the old Egyptian ruins represent circumcised children.

Labat has found traces of circumcision and excision of nymphae in mummies.

Herodotus remarks that the Egyptians practiced circumcision rather as a sanitary measure than as a rite.