The book A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain is a critical look at why male infant circumcision became prevalent in Britian.

The Victorian era is examined, along with the medical establishment's idea at that time that the foreskin must be excised as a routine precaution against every imaginable sexual dysfunction, from syphilis and phimosis to masturbation and bed-wetting. Why Britain adopted a practice it had traditionally abhorred and then abandoned it after only two generations is the subject of A Surgical Temptation.

The author reveals that circumcision has always been related to the question of how to control male sexuality. Many men in the US claim that their infant circumcision has not affected them in any way. Unfortunately, men cut at birth have no way of telling how their sexual pleasure has been affected by their infant circumcision. This book attempts to add a ray of light to the circumcision controversy.

"This book should be required reading for American physicians in particular, especially those who continue to perform an operation seldom practiced in the rest of the world and who might not know why it was originally begun." (Robert A. Nye JAMA )

 The book has been reviewed in the journal of Victorian Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 147-49 (Autumn 2005).  "Robert Darby insists only that Victorian doctors came strongly to believe that the penis needed to be controlled and regulated, and that an important means to this end was the demonization and removal of the foreskin."
 

Disclaimer: The book links above will take you to Amazon.com, where, if you buy the book, I will make about 26 cents and will be that much closer to retiring to my Caribbean island.