and epigastric arteries, had at last reached the prepuce, where
the olfactory sense could have been turned on at will, like an
incandescent lamp,--it might have been a very useful organ, as in that
sense it could have scented danger from afar, if not from near, and
enabled man to avoid any of the many dangers into which he unconsciously
drops. But, seeing that the prepuce, to say nothing of being neither
nose, eye, nor ear to warn one away from danger, or a leg to run away on
after once in it, having not even the precautionary sensitiveness of a
cat's moustachios, it cannot, in any way that we can see, be compared to
any other useful part of the body.

All attempts to find reasons for its existence that are of real benefit
to man have so far proved unsatisfactory, and, unlike the reasons for
its removal, are, as a rule, founded on speculation. To further reason
out the why and wherefore of its existence or of its summary surgical
execution, we must consider its shifting positions as to the effects it
produces, as well as to its conditions at different ages, sitting on its
case like an impartial jury in the case of some unconvicted but
diabolically-inclined criminal.

As before remarked, we are, as a rule, born with this appendage, just as
much as we are with the appendix vermiformis, which rises up, like
Banquo's ghost, whenever we eat tomatoes or any small-seeded fruit. This
prepuce is then long, and the penis is found at the end of an
undilatable canal, which is formed by the constricted prepuce; at this
early stage of our existence it is often additionally bound down to the
glans by a greater or less number of adhesions. We are then in what many
term a state of physiological phimosis, that being a perfectly natural
condition, and one consistent with health; at least, we imagine it is
normal.

Phimosis in childhood is generally considered a physiological state,
only to be taken as a pathological condition under certain
circumstances. Preputial adhesions may, according to many observers,
also be classed as physiological at an early period of life, as it is by
them considered as congenital, and common enough to warrant its being
classed as normal. As to the first, or phimosis, it undoubtedly is a
physiological condition during infancy; but why, we do not know; and it
is also a fact that from birth to puberty it remains so in fully over
one-half of the cases. Out of 98 children, from one week to sixteen
years of age,