he amorous
bride of the eunuch Potiphar, with the suicide of Lucretia, in the past,
are events which virtue and modern continence probably duplicate every
day; but these are exceptions to the rule. Physicians daily see
evidences of the most devoted Platonic affection in either sex, but they
also see enough of the opposite side of the question to convince them
that in the majority of cases the sexual relations are the bond of
union, as well as the mainspring of love. As observed by Montesquieu,
the bride of a first-class Turkish eunuch has but a sorry time, and a
woman of the same calibre of mind as that possessed by the ordinary
Circassian or Armenian bride cannot be in a much happier condition with
a husband partly eunuchised by a constricted prepuce.

CHAPTER XIX.

IS THE PREPUCE A NATURAL PHYSIOLOGICAL APPENDAGE?

By many surgeons the idea of circumcision, unless connected with an
immediate demand for interference,--such as a phimosis unmanageable by
any other means, an induced phimosis from gonorrhoea or other
irritation, syphilis in its initiatory sore, cancer or some such
cause,--is looked upon as an unwarrantable operation, a procedure not
only barbarous, painful, and dangerous, but one that directly interferes
with the intentions of nature. The prepuce is by many looked upon as a
physiological necessity to health and the enjoyment of life, which, if
removed, is liable to induce masturbation, excessive venereal desire,
and a train of other evils. The question then resolves itself, What is
the real physiological status of this appendage, if it has any, and, if
it is a physiological appendage, when does it merge into a pathological
appendage? As by some it is held that the prepuce enjoys the same right
to live and exist as the nose, ear, or a limb, which are only subject to
amputation in case of a serious disease, they should be reminded that
they are not taking into consideration that the nose and ear are
calculated to warn us of danger, and that our legs are very useful; as
even the great orator Demosthenes, by the timely and rapid use of his
legs, was enabled to escape from a battle, where his oratory was of no
avail against the illiterate javelins of the unscholarly Macedonians. If
the prepuce only was endowed with an olfactory sense,--as, for instance,
if a nervous filament from the first pair of nerves had been sent down
alongside of the pneumogastric and then, by following the track of the
mammary