[76] Ashhurst. “Int. Enc. Surgery.”
[77] Horner. “Naval Practice.”
[78] Cincinnati Lancet and Observer., vol. xvi, 1873.
[79] It may well be a question of some interest whether the atrophy of the testicle in the aged may not at times be partly due to the compression exercised by the prepuce on the glans through reflex action, and whether at times the virility that is departing cannot be restored by circumcision in such cases. I have seen such results, being guided to the idea by the Biblical relation in the case of Abraham.
[80] This patient subsequently died of a uræmic complication following on an attack of fever. The man was in his prime, and had been of most exemplary habits. The fever that he had was, I had every reason to believe, directly due to the results of imperfect blood depuration incident on the irritability of his kidneys, which, retroactively, again allowed the uræmic condition to assume that dangerous degree that suddenly and very unexpectedly to his friends and family ushered the patient into eternity. This man had only been merely inconvenienced by his prepuce up to the time that it caused his death. It is interesting to observe what little trifles bring about the end of some men. The unlucky habit of putting the royal countenance on paper brought Louis XVI to a sudden halt at Varennes, and his head to the scaffold. The lucky meeting of the aides of Bonaparte and Desaix between Novi and Marengo gave to France its empire and to Europe the enlightenment that was diffused by that event. If such trifles affect individuals and nations, we must not be astonished that the little useless prepuce should be endowed with the mischief-working power of the historical old cow and kerosene lamp that reduced Chicago to ashes.
[81] In the London Lancet for 1885 there is a very interesting communication at page 46 on this subject. There is no doubt but that the prepuce offers the best skin-grafting material.
[82] In the seventeenth volume (third series) of “Guy’s Hospital Reports” there is a most interesting report at page 243 of a case of skin-grafting that was performed by Thomas Bryant. The case was an extensive ulcer resulting from an injury. Bryant took some skin-grafts from the man’s arm and some from a colored man in an adjoining bed. The account gives the daily report as taken from the note-book of Mr. Clarke, and is accompanied by a colored plate to illustrate the subject; the proliferation of the black skin is astonishing. In closing the report Mr. Clarke says: “But in the figures depicted the amount of increase in the black patches will be well seen. In ten weeks the four or five pieces of black skin, which together were not larger than a grain of barley, had grown twentyfold, and in an another month the black patch was more than one inch long by half an inch broad, the black centres of cutification having clearly grown very rapidly by the proliferation of their own black cells.”
[83] American Journal Med. Sciences, vol. lx.
[84] “Circumcision.” By Dr. A. B. Arnold, of Baltimore.
[85] “De la Circoncision.” By Dr. S. Bernheim. Paris.