h
wildly dilated eyes, and performing a fantastic _pas seul_, was a man
with a huge pair of scissors dangling between his legs, warning all
hands as they valued his life not to approach or lay a hand on him. He
had shut the scissors down so that it clinched the thin prepuce, and
there his courage and determination had forsaken him; he lost his
presence of mind, and was not even able to take off the scissors; he had
simply given one wild, blood-curdling yell--like the last winding notes
from Roland's horn at Roncevalles--that had brought his family to the
wood-shed-door, and they had then sent for a surgeon. New terrors here
awaited the unlucky victim for self-circumcision. He dreaded lest the
surgeon should accidentally have it enter his mind to finish the
operation with the scissors, and in that case he would be helpless, as
the surgeon would, undoubtedly, have a sure and tender hold of it. After
executing a number of _pas a deux_ on the Magilton step, while the
surgeon endeavored to reassure him and gain his confidence, promising to
remove the scissors without inflicting any further harm, he was finally
allowed to approach, and, while the patient assumed a Taglioni attitude
on one foot, the other leg being extended at right angles with the body
and his hands clawing the air, the scissors was removed. The patient,
through the aid of lead lotions and a week's rest, made a good recovery
with a whole prepuce, chagrined at his failure, but happy to have
escaped immediate pain.[80]

There is not much doubt but that the operation could have been
suggested by its, at times, spontaneous performance, a case of which, by
Cullerier, and some other additional cases have been mentioned in a
former chapter. Cases occur at times, also, wherein the person having a
previously normal and uninterfering prepuce has, through either herpetic
inflammations or through impure connection, spurious gonorrhoea, or the
use of some venereal-disease preventing-wash after connection, produced
some irritation resulting in the abnormal thickening of the inner fold,
or an interstitial deposit at the junction of the skin and mucous
membrane, with consequent constriction, this deposit finally forming a
hard, inelastic ring, which prevented a free exposure of the glans and
interfered in sexual connection. In such cases,--like in stricture of
the meatus,--any mechanical interference short of cutting with a knife
only aggravates the existing difficulty, and