ation, satyriasis, or nymphomania; moral, hygienic, and internal
medication being by both these authors considered to be all that our
science could offer or do to alleviate or cure this unfortunate class.
It is only of late years that circumcision, in its true relations to
onanism, has received full consideration. In regard to its being a cure
of impotence, its recognition has been of longer duration.

It is related by Leonard, in his "Memoires,"--who, in his capacity of
hair-dresser in ordinary to her Majesty, the unfortunate
Marie-Antoinette, had ample opportunity for picking up all the domestic
small talk of the royal family and their affairs,--that Louis XVI, in
addition to all his troubles and the indignities which he suffered,
besides finally being beheaded, was afflicted with a congenital phimosis
which prevented the flow of semen from properly discharging itself. It
appears that his Majesty was no little annoyed at not being able to
procure an heir to his throne. His royal sister-in-law, the Countess
d'Artois, had given birth to a prince, the Duke of Angouleme, who was
the heir presumptive to the throne in case of the non-issue from Louis;
another sister-in-law had been brought to bed with a royal princess, and
here was the king himself without any prospective possibility of any
heir. Like all kings, he was more or less unreasonable; so he blamed his
first surgeon in ordinary for all these short-comings,--as if it were
the duty of these court surgeons, among their many other tribulations,
to furnish heirs to thrones. The surgeon finally informed his Majesty
that if he wished to become a father it would be necessary for him to
submit to the slight operation that was the subject of the church
festival of the first day of January, namely, the Feast of the
Circumcision. His most Christian Majesty entered a protest to this
acknowledgment that there was anything in Judaism worth imitating. The
surgeon insisted that the operation celebrated on the first of January
would put him in a way to have the much-desired heir. The king finally
waived all objections from any religious scruples, but could not be
brought to look at the prospective operation with any sentiments of
agreeable expectation.

The king finally became good-natured, and a touch of that plebeian
jollity which at times made him quite agreeable spread over his features
as he imagined the ludicrousness of the spectacle that would be
presented by a king of Fran