in no greater
state of suspense and uncertainty with the fate of the Army of the
Potomac on his hands than the writer must acknowledge he was with this
man and his organ apparently liquefying under his treatment. The
surprise can be better imagined than described when, on the following
morning, the glans made its appearance safe and sound out of its
imprisonment, and at right angles with the organ there hung the prepuce,
thick and as large and as long as the penis itself, inflammatory deposit
and infiltration having brought it to that shape and consistence; the
glans became completely uncovered; the parts gathered underneath, where,
in the course of some weeks, they had shrunk to the size of a walnut,
which was afterward removed by the knife. In this case, as in the other
two cases observed, the corona was very prominent and acted as an
internal tourniquet by its upward pressure, the line of demarkation
being on the dorsum in the three cases noted.

That such cases would suggest circumcision is not only probable but
possible, as it would point out the manner of performing the operation;
but, in the cases of the Australian savages, who performed an artificial
hypospadias on themselves for a specific purpose, requiring a knowledge
of the anatomical relation of the parts as well as of their
physiological functions, it is hard to speculate how the operation was
first suggested or how it came at first to be performed. As a Malthusian
agent it is certainly an operation of the highest merit, and it should
be introduced, by all means, in the United States, where the wealth and
luxury in which the people dwell is fast drifting them toward the same
whirlpool that engulfed Rome, which was preceded by a dislike to have
children. Whenever the writer sees the poor anaemic, broken-down victim
of many miscarriages, he cannot help but feel that, if the laws of the
Damiantina River savages were enforced on their husbands, it would be a
blessing to the poor women without materially injuring the husbands,
who, in case of need of a re-establishment of the functions of
procreation, might be fitted with a vulcanite plate for the
occasion,--something like our cleft-palate patients are supplied with a
plate that enables them to articulate.

It was the custom among the Hottentots, when first discovered or known
to the whites, to remove one of their testicles. This was supposed to
enable them to run more swiftly and to be lighter-footed in the