I finally found for you a rare text, that I have been long seeking to transcribe for posting at the UCLA School of Medicine - Rare Books Archive Library; which contains a concise reference to chastity device (infibulation) history and customs during and prior to the 19th century. This text is somewhat rambling and there are no illustrations.
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Complete Text Title and subtitle:
Attributed: Classified, annotated, and indexed", by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle.
Place and Publishing date: Philadelphia, 1896.
Forward: Infibulation of the male and female external genital organs for the prevention of sexual congress is a very ancient custom.
Ancient Male Infibulation Customs:
The Romans infibulated their singers to prevent coitus, and consequent change in the voice, and pursued the same practice with their actors and dancers.
According to Celsus, Mercurialis, and others, the gladiators were infibulated to guard against the loss of vigor by sexual excesses. In an old Italian work there is a figure of an infibulated musician -- a little bronze statue representing a lean individual tortured or deformed by carrying an enormous ring through the end of the penis. In one of his pleasantries Martial says of these infibulated singers that they sometimes break their rings and fail to place them back -- "et cujus refibulavit turgidum faber peruem." Heinsius considers Agamemnon cautious when he left Demodocus near Clytemnestra, as he remarks that Demodocus was infibulated. For such purposes as the foregoing infibulation offered a more humane method than castration.
Infibulation by a ring in the prepuce was used to prevent premature copulation, and was in time to be removed, but in some cases its function was the preservation of perpetual chastity.
Among some of the religious mendicants in India there were some who were condemned to a life of chastity, and, in the hotter climates, where nudity was the custom, these persons traveled about exposing an enormous preputial ring, which was looked upon with adoration by devout women. It is said these holy persons were in some places so venerated that people came on their knees, and bowing below the ring, asked forgiveness -- possibly for sexual excesses.
Ancient Female Infibulation Customs:
Rhodius mentions the usage of infibulation in antiquity, and Fabricius d'Aquapendente remarks that infibulation was usually practiced in females for the preservation of chastity. No Roman maiden was able to preserve her virginity during participation in the celebrations in the Temples of Venus, the debauches of Venus and Mars, etc., wherein vice was authorized by divine injunction; for this reason the lips of the vagina were closed by rings of iron, copper, or silver, so joined as to hinder coitus, but not prevent evacuation. Different sized rings were used for those of different ages. Although this device provided against the coitus, the maiden was not free from the assaults of the Lesbians.
In the Orient, particularly in India and Persia, according to old travelers, the labia were sewed together, allowing but a small opening for excretions. Buffon and Brown mention infibulation in Abyssinia, the parts being separated by a bistoury at the time of marriage. In Circassia the women were protected by a copper girdle or a corset of hide and skin which, according to custom, only the husband could undo. Peney speaks of infibulation for the preservation of chastity, as observed by him in the Sudan. Among the Nubians this operation was performed at about the age of eight with great ceremony, and when the time for marriage approached the vulva had to be opened by incision.
Sir Richard Buxton, a distinguished traveler, also speaks of infibulation, and, according to him, at the time of the marriage ceremony the male tries to prove his manhood by using only Nature's method and weapon to consummate the marriage, but if he failed he was allowed artificial aid to effect entrance. Sir Samuel Baker is accredited in The Lancet with giving an account of the modus operandi of a practice among the Nubian women of removing the clitoris and nymphae in the young girl, and abrading the adjacent walls of the external labia so that they would adhere and leave only a urethral aperture.
This ancient custom of infibulation is occasionally seen at the present day in civilized countries, and some cases of infibulation from jealousy are on record.
Examples of Infibulation During the 1890's:
There is mentioned, as from the Leicester Assizes, the trial of George Baggerly for execution of a villainous infibulation design on his wife. In jealousy he "had sewed up her private parts."
Recently, before the New York Academy of Medicine, Collier reported a case of pregnancy in a woman presenting nympha-infibulation. The patient sought the physician's advice in the summer of 1894, while suffering from uterine disease, and being five weeks pregnant. She was a Germanwoman of twenty-eight, had been married several years, and was the mother of several children. Collier xamined her and observed two holes in the nymphae. When he asked her concerning these, she reluctantly told him that she had been compelled by her husband to wear a lock in this region. Her mother, prior to their marriage, sent her over to the care of her future husband (he having left Germany some months before). Reportedly on her arrival her husband perforated the labia minora, causing her to be ill several weeks; after she had sufficiently recovered he put on a padlock, and for many years he had practiced the habit of locking her up after each intercourse. Strange to relate, no physician, except Collier, had ever inquired about the openings.
In this connection... the celebrated Harvey mentions a mare (a female horse) with infibulated genitals, but these did not prevent successful labor of the draft animal.
Infibulation for Preventing Masturbation
Occasionally infibulation has been used as a means of preventing masturbation.
De la Fontaine has mentioned this fact, and there is a case in this country in which acute dementia from masturbation was cured by infibulation. In this instance the prepuce was perforated in two opposite places by a trocar, and two pewter sounds (No. 2) were introduced into the wounds and twisted like rings. On the eleventh day one of the rings was removed, and a fresh one introduced in a new place. A cure was effected in eight weeks.
There is recent mention made of a method of preventing masturbation by a cage fastened over the male genitals and held in placed by straps and locks.
In cases of children the key was to be kept by the parents, but in adults to be put in some part of the house remote from the sleeping apartment, the theory being that the desire would leave before the key could be obtained.
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