In 1949, Douglas Gairdner, a pediatrician in Cambridge, England, published “Fate of the Foreskin: A Study of Circumcision,” hereafter, “Fate of the Foreskin,” in the British Medical Journal. In the article, Gairdner highlights what he saw as a seriously understudied topic, the natural development of the foreskin in males. Although physicians were then circumcising tens of thousands of male infants annually in England, data on the normal anatomy and function of the foreskin were scarce. In “Fate of the Foreskin,” Gairdner assembles those data and uses them to argue against performing circumcision to treat conditions like phimosis. Phimosis is when the foreskin tightly encases the glans, or head, of the penis and cannot retract. Gairdner finds that an unretractable foreskin is actually the normal state for newborn males, and that the foreskin will become retractable on its own over a period of months to years. By showing that phimosis is not a pathological condition, “Fate of the Foreskin” questioned the legitimacy of routine circumcision, and ultimately led to a steep decline of the practice in England.