sary to protect the
tactile sensibility of the glans, due to the presence of the Pacinian
bodies which Schweigger Seidel discovered in the nerves, and that a
better provision than the anatomy of the prepuce cannot be conceived for
shielding the very vascular and sensitive structure of the glans from
external sources of irritation and friction, that might rouse the
sensibility of this organ, which, on physiological grounds, may cause
early masturbation; further arguing that, the corona being undoubtedly
the most excitable part of the glans, its denudation by circumcision
leaves it more apt to be affected by chance titillations.[90] In this
latter view of the case the preponderance of views is, however, in the
opposite direction. J. Royes Bell states that, owing to the induration
of the glans through the means of circumcision, masturbation and
syphilis are less rife amongst the circumcised than amongst the
uncircumcised.[91] M. Lallemand, whose experience in the treatment of
seminal emissions is of the greatest value, looked upon circumcision as
one of the means of curing those diseases, looking on the diminished
irritability of the glans resulting from the operation as the curative
element.[92] Dr. Cahen, in a "Dissertation sur la Circoncision," in
1816, before the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, called the attention to
the diminished sensibility of the glans induced by circumcision. Dr.
Vanier, of Havre, looks upon the prepuce as the most frequent cause of
onanism. "If the prepuce is lax, its mobility produces an irritation to
the highly irritable and sensitive nervous system of the child by the
titillation in its movements on the glans; if too tight and constricted,
then it compresses the glans, and by its irritation it leads the child
to seize the organ."[93] So that in either case he looks upon the
prepuce, through the sensitiveness it retains and induces in the glans,
as the principle cause of masturbation. M. Debreyne, the Trappist monk
and physician of La Trappe, who has paid considerable attention to
medicine as applied to morality, practically makes the same
observations. In children who have not yet the suggestions of sexual
desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of
the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may,
in individual cases, either through precept or example, physical or
mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the
practice can