be asserted as being very rare among the children of
circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the
class; neither in infancy are they as liable to priapism during sleep as
those that are uncircumcised.

Dr. Bernheim says that "the prepuce may be said in general to be an
appendage to man, if not positively harmful in some cases, at least
useless, requiring constant care, the neglect of which is liable to
entail disease and suffering; the irritation it produces through the
sebaceous secretion is a frequent cause of masturbation which nothing
short of circumcision will remedy."

Through middle life, unless the prepuce be the subject of some vicious
conformation, little inconvenience may result from its presence, except
it be from the dangers to infections already pointed out during this
period of life; an ordinarily movable and retractable prepuce will not
acquire the condition of phimosis, unless it be through disease or
accident; but with our entrance into old age, or after having passed our
vigorous prime, the torment of the days of our infancy and childhood
come to harass us again. Persons given to corpulency, with a long
prepuce, are apt to become affected with phimosis in their latter years,
as such persons are more subject to loss of their sexual vigor and power
of erection than lean and spare people; in these, the gradual diminution
of the size of the erectile tissues of the organ and its retraction
allows of the reconstriction of the preputial opening, which, in the
end, will not allow the prepuce to be drawn back over the gland. These
conditions are followed by the irritating affections incident to
phimosis of our earlier life, with the modification that age has induced
in making us subject to more serious and fatal ailments, both locally
and generally.

CHAPTER XX.

THE PREPUCE, PHIMOSIS, AND CANCER.

In the _British Medical Journal_ of January 7, 1882, there is an
interesting article by Jonathan Hutchinson on the "Pre-cancerous Stage
of Cancer." In this article he states that, whereas, twenty years
previously, his suggestion had been to treat all suspicious sores as
being due to syphilis until a clearer diagnosis could be made out, he
"had more recently often explained and enforced the doctrine of a
pre-cancerous stage of cancer. According to this doctrine, in most cases
of cancer, either of penis, lips, tongue, or skin, there is a
stage--often a long one--during which a c