Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/373

Rh missionaries therefore finding it impossible that ever their congregation could increase, and that this accident did frustrate all their labours, laid their case before the College of Cardinals de propaganda fide, at Rome. These took it up as a matter of moment, which it really was, and sent over visitors skilled in surgery, fairly to report upon the case as it stood; and they, on their return, declared, that the heat of the climate, or some other natural cause, did, in that particular nation, invariably alter the formation so as to make a difference from what was ordinary in the sex in other countries, and that this difference did occasion a disgust, which must impede the confluences for which matrimony was instituted. The college, upon this report, ordered that a declaration, being first made by the patient and her parents that it was not done from Judaical intention, but because it disappointed the ends of marriage, "Si modo matrimonii fructus impediret id omnino tollendum esset:" that the imperfection was, by all manner of means, to be removed; so that the Catholics, as well as the Cophts, in Egypt, undergo excision ever since. This is done with a knife, or razor, by women generally when the child is about eight years old.

is another ceremony with which I shall close, and this regards the women also, and I shall call it incision. This