for soldierly
conduct and bearing.

These apparent digressions are not made either to be tedious or to weary
the reader, nor without an object. They are made to show that, whereas
syphilis is looked upon as such a deadly disease, and it may be said to
be the sole cause of fear to the assiduous worshiper at the shrine of
Venus Porcina, there is another still more fatal danger awaiting him,
ambushed in the folds of the vaginal mucous membrane, or coming along
silently out of the cervical canal,--like the legions of Cyrus stealing
along the dry bed of the Euphrates into ancient Babylon, to fall
unawares on the feasting Nebuchadnezzar on that fatal night. So, in like
manner, the virus of tuberculosis, either extruding from a granular os
or from its neighborhood, gradually moves down on the unsuspecting,
uncircumcised, and easily inoculable-surfaced glans penis, to infect the
system with a tubercular poison that has no such exceptions as those
above noted, as at times are the followers of syphilis. It is not alone
the individual himself that may be the sufferer from this poison, but
his progeny for several generations may have to suffer for the infection
thus received, just as much as they would were that infection to have
been syphilitic. As before remarked, this has heretofore not
sufficiently occupied the consideration of the profession, and, as it
cannot certainly be denied that such a source of tubercular infection is
both possible and probable, the subject is entitled to more serious and
deliberate consideration than that which has heretofore been paid to it.

Tuberculosis certainly has these two channels of entrance: either
through direct infection or through an evolutionary process resulting
from syphilis. The appearance and vital statistics offered by the French
War Office in regard to the Algierine provinces, the report of the
United States Census, the opinion of Dr. Billings deduced from the
census reports, the opinions of Hutchinson, Richardson, Bernheim, and
many other observers, as well as the personal but unrecorded
observations of many practitioners, all tend to bear testimony to the
remarkable difference that exists between circumcised and uncircumcised
races in regard to the ravages of consumption. Is circumcision a factor
in this difference, or is it not? If it is, then circumcision should
receive more attention than it has; if it is not, then we should not be
idle in hunting up the cause of difference,