In the second volume of Otis on "Genito-Urinary Diseases," of the Birmingham edition, at page 380, there is an interesting account of a physician who, in youth, was troubled with an annoying prepuce, which, from frequent attacks of balanitis, had finally become more or less adherent to the glans penis; up to the age of nineteen he had been unable to completely uncover the glans. By six months of hard and persistent labor he had finally broken up these adhesions. At the age of twenty-two he married, and he then ruptured the frenum, which bled profusely and left him sore for some days. Then for twenty-seven years he had no further trouble, but at the end of that time he began to experience what he believed were attacks of dumb ague, and the scrotum began to swell and felt sore on firm pressure. Heavy, aching pains then followed. This condition of things lasted for over five years, varied by the appearance of carbuncles on the nose and elsewhere, to relieve the monotony of the thing. From this time on, abscesses began to form in the scrotum and into the integument of the penis, burrowing forward into the prepuce, which was much swollen and painful. A gangrenous opening effected itself in the dorsal surface, which relieved him somewhat. The patient was finally examined by Dr. Otis, who found a badly strictured urethra, the strictures beginning at the meatus, and at intervals extended down as far as two and three-fourths inches. The case had no venereal history, the patient never having had any disease or anything of the kind. The strictures were plainly the result of the balano-posthitic attacks as much as they were the cause of the degeneration of the mucous membrane in the lower urethra, that allowed of the infiltration of urine into the tissues, which caused all the systemic disturbances, abscesses, misery, and agony of the patient, depriving him of comfort, sleep, or ability for labor, and which sent him here and there in search of health and relief.
It would seem really as if a prepuce was a dangerous appendage at any time, and life-insurance companies should class the wearer of a prepuce under the head of hazardous risks, for a circumcised laborer in a powder-mill or a circumcised brakeman or locomotive engineer runs actually less risk than an uncircumcised tailor or watchmaker. They recognize the danger that lurks in a stricture, but what a prepuce can and does do, they entirely ignore. I have not had any opportunities for comparison, but it would be interesting to know, from the statistics of some of these companies, how much more the Hebrew is, as a premium-payer, of value to the company than his uncircumcised brother. Were they to offer some inducement, in the shape of lower rates, to the circumcised, as they should do, they would not only benefit the companies by insuring a longer number of years, on which the insured would pay premiums, but they would be instrumental in decreasing the death-rate and extending longevity.