s country in which acute dementia from masturbation was
cured by infibulation. In this instance the prepuce was perforated in
two opposite places by a trocar, and two pewter sounds (No. 2) were
introduced into the wounds and twisted like rings. On the eleventh day
one of the rings was removed, and a fresh one introduced in a new
place. A cure was effected in eight weeks. There is recent mention made
of a method of preventing masturbation by a cage fastened over the
genitals by straps and locks. In cases of children the key was to be
kept by the parents, but in adults to be put in some part of the house
remote from the sleeping apartment, the theory being that the desire
would leave before the key could be obtained.

Among some peoples the urethra was slit up as a means of preventing
conception, making a meatus near the base of the penis. Herodotus
remarks that the women of a certain portion of Egypt stood up while
they urinated, while the men squatted. Investigation has shown that
the women were obliged to stand up on account of elongated nymphae and
labia, while the men sought a sitting posture on account of the
termination of the urethra being on the inferior side of the base of
the penis, artificially formed there in order to prevent conception. In
the Australian Medical Gazette, May, 1883, there is an account of some
of the methods of the Central Australians of preventing conception. One
was to make an opening into the male urethra just anterior to the
scrotum, and another was to slit up the entire urethra so far as to
make but a single canal from the scrotum to the glans penis. Bourke
quotes Palmer in mentioning that it is a custom to split the urethra of
the male of the Kalkadoon tribe, near Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia
Mayer of Vienna describes an operation of perforation of the penis
among the Malays; and Jagor and Micklucho-Maclay report similar customs
among the Dyaks and other natives of Borneo, Java, and Phillipine
Islands.

Circumcision is a rite of great antiquity. The Bible furnishes frequent
records of this subject, and the bas-reliefs on some of the old
Egyptian ruins represent circumcised children. Labat has found traces
of circumcision and excision of nymphae in mummies. Herodotus remarks
that the Egyptians practiced circumcision rather as a sanitary measure
than as a rite. Voltaire stated that the Hebrews borrowed circumcision
from the Egyptians; but the Jews claimed that the Phoenicians borr