ffice to the courts, counting-rooms, or stores
without the least resulting inconvenience or loss of time. In laborers
it is better to perform the operation on a Saturday evening, which gives
them a rest of thirty-six hours before going to their labor again. The
operation is comparatively painless and almost bloodless, as there need
not be more than half a teaspoonful of blood lost during the operation;
there is no danger of any subsequent haemorrhage, and, with proper
precautions against the occurrence of erections, from seventy-two to
ninety-six hours is sufficient for a complete union; the sutures are
then removed and a simple lint and adhesive-plaster dressing worn for a
few days more. In many, no more dressings are required. In many cases,
with a properly adjusted dressing, that comes forward underneath so as
to include the frenum, the simple dorsal slit is sufficient; but if any
of the prepuce depasses the dressing underneath, it will puff and become
oedematous and require frequent puncturing. To avoid it, it is better to
make the Cloquet slit at once. This operation is of no value, and
perfectly impracticable in a thick, pendulous prepuce. Absorption will
often remove considerable preputial tissue, but where there is too much
its very bulk interferes with its removal by any natural means.

Dilatation is recommended by a number of surgeons, but, I must admit, in
my hands it has always proved a failure; it may be, that if the
subsequent history of the cases reported as so operated upon had been
carefully traced, the reports would not have been so good. Nelaton,
whose dilating instrument is generally recommended, seems, himself, to
prefer some of the circumcising methods, as in the volume on "Diseases
of the Genito-Urinary Organs," in his "Surgery," being the sixth volume
of the revised edition of 1884, by Despres, Gillettte, and Horteloup,
the subject of dilatation is dismissed in two short lines. St. Germain,
of Paris, uses, as has been before observed, a two-bladed forceps, used
after the manner of Nelaton, and reports good results. Dr. J. Lewis
Smith agrees in his statements with Dr. St. Germain. Dr. Holgate, of New
York, reports a like experience. In my own practice the prepuce has
often been made _temporarily_ lax and retractable, but with the usual
results of the return of the contraction, with a possible thickening of
the inner fold, as a result of the interference; so that only in case of
any immediate demand