I could prove it in detail, by the infallible rule of
analogical reasoning. John Hunter has observed that the use of the
prostate was not sufficiently known to enable us to form a judgment of
the bad consequences of its diseased state. When the part becomes
morbidly enlarged, it acts as a mechanical impediment to the passage of
urine from the bladder, but from this circumstance we cannot reasonably
infer, that while of its normal healthy proportions, its special
function is to facilitate the egress of the urine, for the female
bladder, though wholly devoid of the prostate, performs its own function
perfectly. It appears to me, therefore, that the real question should
be, not what is the use of the prostate? but has it any proper function?
If the former question puzzled even the philosophy of Hunter, it was
because the latter question must be answered in the negative. The
prostate has no function proper to itself per se. It is a thing distinct
from the urinary apparatus, and distinct likewise from the generative
organs. It may be hypertrophied or atrophied, or changed in texture, or
wholly destroyed by abscess, and yet neither of the functions of these
two systems of organs will be impaired, if the part while diseased act
not as an obstruction to them. In texture the prostate is similar to an
unimpregnated uterus. In form it is, like the uterus, symmetrical. In
position it corresponds to the uterus. The prostate has no ducts proper
to itself. Those ducts which are said to belong to it (prostatic ducts)
are merely mucous cells, similar to those in other parts of the urethral
lining membrane. The seminal ducts evidently do not belong to it. The
texture of the prostate is not such as appears in glandular bodies
generally. In short, the facts which prove what it is not, prove what it
actually is--namely, a uterus arrested in its development, and as a sign
of that all-encompassing law in nature, which science expresses by the
term "unity in variety." This interpretation of the prostate, which I
believe to be true to nature, will last perhaps till such time as the
microscopists shall discover in its "secretion" some species of
mannikins, such as may pair with those which they term spermatozoa.]

Fig. 1, Plate 61.--The prostate, a b, is here represented thinned in its
walls above and below. The lower wall is dilated into a pouch caused by
the points of misdirected instruments in catheterism having been rashly
forced against it.