degrees of induration also results according to the intensity,
the duration, and the frequency of the phlogosis. Thus, I have
often found a mucous membrane hardened, thickened, and covered
with numerous papillae, sometimes fibrous or cartilaginous,
with three times its natural thickness. I have also met with
cases in which the prepuce has become cancerous. I have
operated in several cases of cancer of the penis, too, which
certainly arose from no other cause. The patients were
generally peasants between fifty and sixty years of age, who
had never known other than their own wives, but who had
frequently suffered from balanitis attended by abundant
discharge, swelling of the prepuce, and excoriation of its
opening, which was so contracted as to prevent the passage of
the glans. I have seen one case, also, in which balanitis,
irritated by a forced march and the abuse of alcoholic
stimulants, passed into gangrene, by which the greater part of
the glans was destroyed. Such have been the accidents which I
have observed on those whose prepuce was too narrow to permit
the glans being uncovered; accidents which I can only
attribute to the long retention of the sebaceous matter in a
kind of _cul-de-sac_, into which a certain quantity of urine
passes every time the patient makes water."

[98] Claparede. "La Circoncision."

[99] Baron Boyer. "Traite des Maladies Chirurgicales," vol. x, page
370.

[100] I have practiced considerably among the Jewish people, but I
have never seen their elderly men suffer with prostatic
troubles like our own people who are uncircumcised. From
having observed the tendency to prostatic complications in
young people with troublesome prepuces, and that the great
number of the elderly people who are affected with prostatic
disease or enlargement are the unlucky possessors of long or
large prepuces, I have arrived at the conclusion that the
prepuce can be entered as a factor in the etiology of enlarged
prostate.

[101] I have now under my care a poor consumptive who has all the
appearance of having always been as virtuous as Joseph, but
who, unlike Joseph, has