ge
number. As the prepuce can be observed in every stage of disappearance
among mixed races, it would seem that in time it would disappear
altogether. Its effectual absence in so many cases evidently belongs to
some evolutionary process, and shows beyond question that nature does
not insist on its presence either as a necessity or as an ornament.

The word or term "phimosis" is derived from two Greek roots, signifying
"string" and "to tighten," or "to tie with a string." Galen, from its
signification, accepted the word, and from him it has been transmitted
through the different epochs of medicine down to our own times. In
virtue of its etymological significance, it was formerly applied to any
stenosis or closure of duct or aperture, but at present the term is used
simply to denote that constriction that affects the prepuce, and which
prevents the glans from being passed through the preputial orifice.
Phimosis is said to be congenital or natural and acquired. The first of
these is the common lot of all, as a rule, and with some it remains so
throughout life. As babyhood advances in boyhood and boyhood into youth,
the prepuce gradually becomes lax and distensible, and in proportion to
the existence of these conditions it also loses in its length. Where,
however, the distal end persists in its constricted condition it is
drawn forward as the penis increases in bulk.

In many cases its tightness prevents the escape of the sebaceous matter
that collects in the sulcus back of the corona, and the resulting
irritation on the surface of the glans and the inner mucous fold of the
prepuce ends in an inflammatory thickening of the latter, its inner
surface becoming thick, undilatable, hard, and unyielding, all the
natural elasticity that should be present having departed, with more or
less inflammatory thickening and adhesions between the two layers of
skin that form the prepuce. In this unyielding tube the glans is
imprisoned and compressed, often suffering the tortures that the
"maiden" of the dungeons of the Inquisition inflicted on the unhappy
heretics. It becomes elongated, cyanosed, and hyperaesthetic; the meatus
of the urethra is congested and hypertrophied, the corona is undeveloped
and often absent, the glans having, on the whole, the long-nosed,
conical appearance of the head of a field-mouse. There are hardly five
per cent. of the uncircumcised but who suffer in some degree from this
constricting result of the prepuce,