In cases of pronounced phimosis the aperture in the prepuce may not be in a line with the meatus, and the resulting discharge of urine or the ejaculations of seminal fluid may from this cause be unable to find an egress. The fluid escaping from the urethra will, in case the opening is at the side or upper part of the prepuce, cause it to balloon out until a sufficient quantity is thrown out so as to distend, the opening as well as the prepuce, before it can find its way out; in such cases impotency is liable to be as complete as in those cases of stricture wherein the seminal fluid is forced backward into the bladder. Having given this general view of the effects of phimosis as it may affect man in the shape of his organ, which may have a serious result in his domestic relations or in becoming a father, we will proceed to the consideration of diseases and conditions that phimosis encourages and to which it renders man more liable. In the consideration of these cases it must not be forgotten that the sexual relations are much more to man or woman than is generally acknowledged. The days for the establishment of the Utopian republic of Plato are not yet with us. That Platonic love does exist is true, as it has in the past and will in the future. Scipio, refusing to accept the beautiful betrothed bride of an enemy as a present, or Joseph leaving his coat-tail in the hands of the amorous bride of the eunuch Potiphar, with the suicide of Lucretia, in the past, are events which virtue and modern continence probably duplicate every day; but these are exceptions to the rule. Physicians daily see evidences of the most devoted Platonic affection in either sex, but they also see enough of the opposite side of the question to convince them that in the majority of cases the sexual relations are the bond of union, as well as the mainspring of love. As observed by Montesquieu, the bride of a first-class Turkish eunuch has but a sorry time, and a woman of the same calibre of mind as that possessed by the ordinary Circassian or Armenian bride cannot be in a much happier condition with a husband partly eunuchised by a constricted prepuce.
IS THE PREPUCE A NATURAL PHYSIOLOGICAL APPENDAGE?