ce of the nature of the disease, have, from delicacy and
fear that the disease might induce some suspicions as to their conduct
in the minds of those whose good opinions they value above all else,
gone on suffering untold miseries, especially if the urine were in the
least diabetic.

One such case that fell under my observation not only produced such
misery as to entail a loss of rest and of appetite, but even induced
such a disturbance of assimilation and nutrition that the resulting
hypochondriacal condition that developed from these enervating causes
ran the patient into a low condition, ending in complete prostration of
all vital powers and death, without the intervention of any other
disease. The subject was a timid, retiring man of about fifty-five
years, and this was the first and only time that the prepuce had ever
caused him any annoyance,--a circumstance which greatly preyed upon his
mind, as he could not disconnect it with the idea that it must be
suspected as venereal, although he had always led a most continent life
since the death of his wife. This is, of course, an extreme case; but as
it is a result beginning in a certain condition, be it an extreme,
erratic, or infrequent occurrence, it is, nevertheless, an example of
what may happen in advanced life, even where the prepuce has never
before been a source of the least disturbance or annoyance. Persons who,
with the increase of years, are also liable to an increase of adipose
tissue, are more subject to this dwindling down of the penis and
consequent elongation of the prepuce, with all the attendant annoyances,
than thin or spare people.

In this irritation that the prepuce is liable to cause, we have not only
to encounter the dangers that its thickenings or indurations may bring
on in their train, in the shape of cancer, gangrene, or hypertrophies,
but other and no less serious results are liable to follow a herpetic
attack, or in consequence of an attack of balanitis or posthitis. The
dysuria attending any of these conditions may be the initial move for
such a serious complication that life may be brought to a sudden end,
even in infancy, to say nothing of the ease with which life is taken off
in after years and in old age; with debilitated and imperfect kidney
action, it takes very little to hustle us off from life's foot-bridge.

A case as occurring in Henoch's clinic, already mentioned or referred to
in a previous chapter, shows what a simple phimo