d vessels and other internal organs.]
Plate 56--Figure 1, 2, 3

COMMENTARY ON PLATES 57 & 58.

CONGENITAL AND PATHOLOGICAL DEFORMITIES OF THE PREPUCE AND
URETHRA.--STRICTURE AND MECHANICAL OBSTRUCTIONS OF THE URETHRA.

When any of the central organs of the body presents in a form differing
from that which we term natural, or structurally perfect and efficient,
if the deformity be one which results as a malformation, ascribable to
an error in the law of development, it is always characterized as an
excess or defect of the substance of the organ at, and in reference to,
the median line. And when any of the canals which naturally open upon
the external surface at the median line happens to deviate from its
proper position, such deviation, if it be the result of an error in the
law of development, always occurs, by an actual necessity, at the median
line. On the contrary, though deformities which are the results of
diseased action in a central organ may and do, in some instances,
simulate those which occur by an error in the process of development,
the former cannot bear a like interpretation with the latter, for those
are the effects of ever-varying circumstances, whereas these are the
effects of certain deviations in a natural process--a law, whose course
is serial, gradational, and in the sequent order of a continuous chain
of cause and effect.

Fig. 1, Plate 57, represents the prepuce in a state of congenital
phymosis. The part hypertrophied and pendent projects nearly an inch in
front of the meatus, and forms a canal, continued forwards from this
orifice. As the prepuce in such a state becomes devoid of its proper
function, and hence must be regarded, not only as a mere superfluity,
but as a cause of impediment to the generative function of the whole
organ, it should be removed by an operation.

[Illustration]
Plate 57.--Figure 1.

Fig. 2, Plate 57, represents the prepuce in the condition of
paraphymosis following gonorrhoeal inflammation. The part appears
constricting the penis and urethra behind the corona glandis. This state
of the organ is produced in the following-mentioned way:--the prepuce,
naturally very extensible, becomes, while covering the glans, inflamed,
thickened, and its orifice contracted. It is during this state withdrawn
forcibly backwards over the glans, and in this situation, while being
itself the first cause of constriction, it induces another--namely, an
arrest to the venous ci