e, with a defective kidney or kidneys, is sadly handicapped
in his usefulness, comfort, or in properly competing in the
race of life. No parent would for a moment think of starting
his son in life by giving him a business that is heavily
mortgaged at the start, but many a parent unconsciously
launches the unsuspecting child into a life of such ill
health--resulting from a simple narrow prepuce--beside which a
heavy mortgage or a heavy yearly tribute would be but a mere
trifle. I have seen such men, who in after life, broken-down
and perfectly physical wrecks, would gladly have given all
their wealth and been willing to have some genii set them down
in the middle of the Sahara, shirtless and pennyless, provided
they had their health. To say nothing of the trifling loss of
the prepuce, these parties would gladly have had a foot or a
leg go with the prepuce if necessary, and have their health.

[104] I have often performed dilatation where, for some reason,
either the timidity of the parents or the health of the child
seemed to contraindicate any more radical procedure. It is
customary to advise mothers or the nurses to retract the skin
daily, but even after a good dilatation I have found as sudden
a recontraction, and even in the majority of cases, where
daily drawing back the skin might have been practicable, the
cries and struggles of the child are a positive prohibition to
these instructions being carried out; it is not once in ten
times that it can be carried out. I have seen two very
annoying cases of paraphimosis resulting from this procedure,
the struggles of the child having prevented the return of the
prepuce to its proper place, and the violent crying and
sobbing of the child having assisted to congest the organ.

[105] It may well be a question, considering the well-established
fact that nervous injuries and affections are easily
transmissible and become hereditary, how much
feeble-mindedness is due to an heredity originally induced in
either parent through reflex neuroses from the genital organs.
The Jews have a very small percentage of feeble-minded; it is
true that they have n