e meatus, and at intervals
extended down as far as two and three-fourths inches. The case had no
venereal history, the patient never having had any disease or anything
of the kind. The strictures were plainly the result of the
balano-posthitic attacks as much as they were the cause of the
degeneration of the mucous membrane in the lower urethra, that allowed
of the infiltration of urine into the tissues, which caused all the
systemic disturbances, abscesses, misery, and agony of the patient,
depriving him of comfort, sleep, or ability for labor, and which sent
him here and there in search of health and relief.

It would seem really as if a prepuce was a dangerous appendage at any
time, and life-insurance companies should class the wearer of a prepuce
under the head of hazardous risks, for a circumcised laborer in a
powder-mill or a circumcised brakeman or locomotive engineer runs
actually less risk than an uncircumcised tailor or watchmaker. They
recognize the danger that lurks in a stricture, but what a prepuce can
and does do, they entirely ignore. I have not had any opportunities for
comparison, but it would be interesting to know, from the statistics of
some of these companies, how much more the Hebrew is, as a
premium-payer, of value to the company than his uncircumcised brother.
Were they to offer some inducement, in the shape of lower rates, to the
circumcised, as they should do, they would not only benefit the
companies by insuring a longer number of years, on which the insured
would pay premiums, but they would be instrumental in decreasing the
death-rate and extending longevity.

I have seen so many cases of stricture whose origin could be traced to
balanitis that it can almost with confidence be assumed that, wherever
there is a long prepuce with a red and inflamed meatus in a child, that
unfortunate child will be a victim of fossal strictures when arrived to
manhood, and that, moreover, he will be a surer victim to the reflex
neuroses which so often accompany strictures, and which have been so
ably described by Otis, than the victim of uncomplicated strictures
acquired in the worship of Venus. There is no end to the misery that
these poor fellows have to suffer, besides the habitual hypochondriacal
condition into which the accompanying physical depression, throws them;
it unfits them for business, any undertaking, or even for social
enjoyment or entertainment; they keep themselves and their families in
con