What do you mean?

?

Fucking Adams and North Adams? Underrated? Their great-grandparents were all child laborers in mills and they do fentanyl to pass the time now. If you want a unique cultural experience, Oliver Twist in an Appalachian setting, then I've got just the place for you.

>I was referring to the whole children & family services system. there's so many kids in harmful situations, but by taking them away from their families, wherever they end up isn't necessarily better

I have no solutions to that deep seated societal issue. This is a societal issue that I can't even begin to solve :(

Most DCF employees are fine people trying to work to make it so that the lives of neglected and abused children are not forgotten. I wish I had an answer.

Also this part stuck out to me.

>DCF said it doesn’t track how often it removes children from their homes without an order.

Most likely, they almost never get an order and operate totally outside of any legal framework. This is just the way they operate. It's hard for some people to feel bad for parents who may be abusing their kids, but this is beyond the pale shit. They're operating totally extrajudicially.

>How do you fix it?

You make it illegal to take children out of homes with no due process. You establish criteria DCF must meet, and DCF must meet it. Unless DCF has firsthand knowledge that child will imminently be harmed, then none of the emergency bullshit. They clearly have gotten used to playing by their own rules.

You have a Judge available 24/7 365 to review warrants. And as often as possible, they are reviewed in person, and recorded for future reference.

Video of the a cop and some social workers showing up at 1:00 AM on a Saturday

Good thing Friday just ended and courts aren't open until Monday. After returning the child from the hospital? For more than a day? It's hard to not think that they're just abusing the emergency powers that they have.

They gave the family ZERO paperwork when they first took the children out. They literally had no documentation that their children were taken by DCF. Not a scrap. No names. No signatures. No documented reasons as to why they're doing it. Nothing.

Tufts by the way. Harvard too.

MGB too.

Newton Wellesley.

The aunt of the father tweeted this (cited in the articles, not just a random person on twitter).

• Wednesday updates: My nephew and his wife were able to read why CPS felt that the boys were in "imminent danger" (CPS says that has to be believed to do the child extraction). And remember, this is after the pediatrician vouched for them, and the hospital released the baby.

• There were 3 reasons listed:

• 1. "Living in a neighborhood with not enough children." This is straight up punishing parents for not being rich. My nephew and his wife chose a "poor" neighborhood because they are trying to save up for a house, and it was convenient to their work.
• 2. "The mother rolled her eyes when asked a question." Want to know what the question was? Here you go: "How often does your husband neglect his children?" I mean... I would have 100% rolled my eyes. What a manipulative thing to ask.
• 3. The last "evidence" was that "the mother cried when they wanted to give the baby another blood test." CPS said, "Her crying indicated that she was guilty." Keep in mind, they had already done 12 tests on the baby! And he was distressed by it!

If even a fraction of that is true, then what the fuck?

Also, this.

• Something you might be interested to know: As soon as the judge ruled against DCF, DCF promptly asked for a gag order against any discussion of the case with the media. But their request for a gag order was denied (except for the actual court records).

What the fuck?

Can anyone explain this to me? What's going on with Harvard/Tufts and DCF?

I mean. This case might be different, the couple is married too.

I understand imminent danger. I understand that it's better to have alive children than children murdered by their parents.

But this seems insane.

The aunt of the father tweeted this (cited in the articles, not just a random person on twitter).

• Wednesday updates: My nephew and his wife were able to read why CPS felt that the boys were in "imminent danger" (CPS says that has to be believed to do the child extraction). And remember, this is after the pediatrician vouched for them, and the hospital released the baby.

• There were 3 reasons listed:

• 1. "Living in a neighborhood with not enough children." This is straight up punishing parents for not being rich. My nephew and his wife chose a "poor" neighborhood because they are trying to save up for a house, and it was convenient to their work.
• 2. "The mother rolled her eyes when asked a question." Want to know what the question was? Here you go: "How often does your husband neglect his children?" I mean... I would have 100% rolled my eyes. What a manipulative thing to ask.
• 3. The last "evidence" was that "the mother cried when they wanted to give the baby another blood test." CPS said, "Her crying indicated that she was guilty." Keep in mind, they had already done 12 tests on the baby! And he was distressed by it!

If even a fraction of that is true, then what the fuck?

Also, this.

• Something you might be interested to know: As soon as the judge ruled against DCF, DCF promptly asked for a gag order against any discussion of the case with the media. But their request for a gag order was denied (except for the actual court records).

What the fuck?

From the globe article.

>- In the Waltham family’s case, child welfare workers had a full business day to obtain a court order before they arrived at the home, in the middle of the night. And still they did not seek one.

>- Sabey and Perkins have been sharing their story publicly to bring attention to what they called a flawed process. After the case workers took the children into custody, they later agreed that weekend to place the boys in the care of their paternal grandparents. But Sabey called for greater oversight, saying there was no need for case workers and police officers to take their children in the first place.

It seems like getting a court order for removing a child isn't the norm? Tufts doc (Newton Wellesley) noticed a rib fracture. Social worker didn't like the answers. No court order needed, even if everything is discovered on a Thursday.

Reason Article

Reason has done great stuff on civil asset forfeiture too.

>- After an exhausting gamut of interviews and after DCF workers surveyed Sabey and Perkins' apartment—where no concerns were found—the couple and their children were sent home on July 14 with a DCF safety plan, assuming their ordeal was over.

>- Instead, DCF came to their house in the middle of the night—around 1:00 a.m.—and demanded custody of the children, despite having no court documents approving removal. "It seems everything was deliberately timed to avoid having to get a court order and avoid proving to a judge that the children were in imminent danger," Perkins later wrote. "Their laziness came at the cost of our children's sense of security."

>- While Perkins' parents, who had flown to Boston, were eventually granted temporary custody of the children, it still took nearly a month for Sabey and Perkins to regain full custody of their children. According to the Post, the couple spent over $50,000 in legal fees fighting to convince the state to return their children. They will likely have to spend much more to strike from the record the couple's "supported allegation of child abuse."

July 14 was a Thursday. They should have been able to get a court order, right? Most people don't have $50,000 lying around. Does DCF operate extrajudicialy?

WaPo article

Without paywall

Video of the a cop and some social workers showing up at 1:00 AM on a Saturday.. Then playing stupid and saying they can't do anything until Monday. Frankly, if you're doing this stuff, a judge needs to be available 24/7 365. An adult can spend 2 days in county jail without it being completely traumatic, but with kids? And to make it so obvious you're trying to avoid having to get a court order?

DCF is just saying whatever they want, no records, no nothing? And the cop says "welp, DCF verbalized it". This seems insane. People win lawsuits for unlawful searches all of the time, but the state can take your kids with no due process on the flimsiest of evidence. If "Living in a neighborhood with not enough children." is one of the reasons DCF used as justification for this, then that's fucking insane. And wrong.

Seems to be the case that it was popularized in the 1940s and 1950s. Not sure about the tropical conditions of the South Pacific thing, it's not like adults were going out and having it done.

Dr. Spock wrote in 1989

> What I recommended to parents about circumcision in early editions of Baby and Child Care is quite different from what I recommend now. In the 1940s, I favored circumcision performed within a few days of birth for a couple of reasons. First, there was, at the time, a commonly held belief in medical circles that women married to uncircumcised men were more likely to develop cancer of the cervix. The second reason I favored routine circumcision was that if the operation were performed on a newborn, there would be no chance of a physician scaring the bejeebers out of a boy by performing the operation when he was older.

...

>In the 1940s and 1950s circumcision became quite common. By the 1960s, 90 percent of all male newborns in the United States were being circumcised as routine procedure. Ten years later, however, opinion among doctors swung away from the belief that certain groups of women developed cancer of the cervix because their husbands were uncircumcised.It was concluded that the cause was actually lack of good male hygiene - which is not as much of a problem in this country as it is in some other parts of the world. Also, by the early 1970s, more physicians - though not all - were aware of the psychological harm that could come from circumcision after infancy, and circumcision of an older child was not suggested as frequently as in the past.

Dr. Lewis Sayre's wiki page says this—In 1870, he introduced circumcision in the United States as a purported cure for several cases of young boys presenting with paralysis and other significant gross motor problems. He thought the procedure ameliorated such problems based on the then prominent "reflex neurosis" theory of disease, with the understanding that a tight foreskin inflamed the nerves and caused systemic problems.

The source however says nothing about him "introducing" it in 1870 specifically. And he couldn't have "introduced cirumcision in the United States" as there had been Jewish communities in the US since colonial times.

Circumcision was "popularized" in the late 1800s with the support of the creator of JAMA. Based on extremely dubious reasoning and probably with a humoral understanding of medicine. Bloodletting was still popular into the 1830s, don't forget.

The Remondino source makes it clear that most Christian Americans were still not circumcising their children as the standard in the 1890s.

Here's the source wikipedia cites.

># 1101

>THE ORTHOPEDIC ORIGIN OF POPULAR MALE CIRCUMCISION IN AMERICA Barbara Chubak*, Bronx, NY

>INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Prophylactic male circumcision, in the absence of any existing urologic pathology, has been and continues to be controversial, as evidenced by the recently and frequently updated American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement on that surgery. This paper investigates the origins of popular circumcision in America, to determine the foundation of the current controversy.

>METHODS: Review of the relevant primary and secondary source literature, including the LA Sayre archival collection at the New York Academy of Medicine.

>RESULTS: Male circumcision was first popularized in late 19th century America by Lewis Sayre, a renowned orthopedic surgeon, public-health activist, and creator of the Journal of the American Medical Association. On the basis of a few orthopedic case reports, Sayre used his influence to promote male circumcision, by redefining it as a systemic therapy, rather than a local anatomic alteration. This redefinition was consonant with the contemporary reflex neurosis theory of disease, as well as the historic humoral-mechanical understanding of the human body.

>CONCLUSIONS: Sayre successfully redefined male circumcision as a systemic therapy, positioning it for continued popularity as a sanitary intervention into the 20th century. Since then, research into the benefits of this surgery has most productively focused on the ways in which it might prevent systemic diseases, such as HIV. However, the dubious evidentiary origins of Sayre’s influential work are a caution against too uncritically accepting as true even the most exciting and promising research.

>Source of Funding: None

The Remondino source says this.

> In the early part of this book, in speaking of female circumcision, it was mentioned that when the medical part of the volume should be reached some medical reasons for its necessity would be given. Dr. Price, in his paper, gives some information on this subject, which is of the greatest interest. In the course of the paper he says as follows: “Nor do I think these reflex neuroses from adherent prepuce wholly confined to the male sex. The preputium-clitoridis may be adherent and produce in the female similar reflexes. During the session of the American Medical Association, held in Chicago in 1874, I think, I attended one afternoon a clinical lecture by Dr. Sayre. A little girl, fourteen years of age, but about the size of a seven-year-old child, was brought in, who had never walked nor spoken, but with quite an intelligent countenance, who was in constant motion, and who presented very many nervous symptoms. Dr. Sayre examined her, and found the prepuce adherent the whole extent of the clitoris. He gave it as his opinion that here was the primary and sole cause of the symptoms, and that appropriate treatment shortly after birth would have prevented all the serious consequences so painfully apparent, and which was then too late to remedy.

I read some of the stuff by Sylvester Graham. That claim seems to have the same issue as the Kellogg's Cereal claim.

Look at the sources used as evidence that the Kellogg Brothers developed Kellog's Cereal to reduce "self-abuse" i.e masturbation. Look at what they cite. Try and find any proof of this that isn't making strange and specious connections.

I encourage you to read the entire thing.

Reading his writings, he does not seem that much out of the ordinary for a liberal heterodox Christian of his time period.

But in my post I give the text.

> # Quacks

>Another trap set is called an "Anatomical Museum." The anatomical part of the exhibition consists chiefly of models and figures calculated to excite the passions to the highest pitch. At stated intervals the proprietor, who is always a "doctor," and by preference a German, delivers lectures on the effects of masturbation, in which he resorts to every device to excite the fears and exaggerate the symptoms of his hearers, who are mostly young men and boys. Thus he prepares his victim, and when he once gets him within his clutches, he does not let him go until he has robbed him of his last dollar.

And argue he's basically just doing a lampoon. He literally says ...lectures on the effects of masturbation, in which he resorts to every device to excite the fears and exaggerate the symptoms of his hearers, who are mostly young men and boys. Thus he prepares his victim, and when he once gets him within his clutches, he does not let him go until he has robbed him of his last dollar.

The citation source for your quote is this. > 59. “Degeneration of the Anglo Saxon Race,” Modern Medicine 10, no. 2 (1901): 44.

And I can't find anything in there about masturbation.

https://i.imgur.com/h5kUD5g.png

I made this same post on /r/AskHistorians, but figured I'd put it here too.

I've probably seen this guy posted a dozen times on reddit as the guy who "popularized circumcision as masturbation prevention in America".

It doesn't seem to be the case, at all. Honestly, this is a fascinating read. It was published in 1877.

I'll add another source below.

P. C. Remondino, M.D., 1891

>In the United States, France, and in England, there is a class which also observe circumcision as a hygienic precaution, where, from my personal observation, I have found that circumcision is thoroughly practiced in every male member of many of the families of the class,—this being the physician class. In general conversation with physicians on this subject, it has really been surprising to see the large number who have had themselves circumcised, either through the advice of some college professor while attending lectures or as a result of their [iv]own subsequent convictions when engaged in actual practice and daily coming in contact both with the benefits that are to be derived in the way of a better physical, mental, and moral health, as well as with the many dangers and disadvantages that follow the uncircumcised,—the latter being probably the most frequent incentive and determinator,—as in many of these latter examples the operation of circumcision, with its pains, annoyances, and possible and probable dangers, sink into the most trifling insignificance in comparison to some of the results that are daily observed as the tribute that is paid by the unlucky and unhappy wearer of a prepuce for the privilege of possessing such an appendage.

It was not uncontroversial at the time, either.

>By many surgeons the idea of circumcision, unless connected with an immediate demand for interference,—such as a phimosis unmanageable by any other means, an induced phimosis from gonorrhœa or other irritation, syphilis in its initiatory sore, cancer or some such cause,—is looked upon as an unwarrantable operation, a procedure not only barbarous, painful, and dangerous, but one that directly interferes with the intentions of nature. The prepuce is by many looked upon as a physiological necessity to health and the enjoyment of life, which, if removed, is liable to induce masturbation, excessive venereal desire, and a train of other evils.

It seems to me, circumcision in America arose mainly out of a belief that that there is a hygiene benefit to it. This belief spread among physicians, and became recommended for newborns. It was also used as a treatment for all sorts of diseases.

>Agnew believes in circumcision in the treatment of reflex troubles. He relates a case, in the second volume of his “Surgery,” of eczema extending over the abdomen, of over a year’s standing, cured in a child by circumcision; he operates by incision on the dorsum, in which he leaves nature to make away with the flaps, or he circumcises by the Bumstead method.

The thesis that the widespread adoption of circumcision in America was due to prude Christian influence to get their their offspring to stop masturbating doesn't seem to hold up when you look at the sources.

>There is one thing that must be admitted concerning circumcision: this being that, among medical men or men of ordinary intelligence who have had the operation performed, instead of being dissatisfied, they have extended the advantages they have themselves received, by having those in their charge likewise operated upon. The practice is now much more prevalent than is supposed, as there are many Christian families where males are regularly circumcised soon after birth, who simply do so as a hygienic measure.

Can anyone help me out with my post over here?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ntls6/what_proof_is_there_that_john_kellogg_circumcised/

I can't find proof that John Kellogg (of Kellogg's cereal) was an anti-masturbation crusader like his wikipedia page, and occasional r/TIL post says. It seems to be a misreading of the source.