iberate the prepuce from the glans;
this is evident also from the statement of Dr. Moses, who only found six
per cent. of the cases operated upon by him as being so affected.

The writer has been present at a large number of Hebrew circumcisions
performed on the eighth day, and from that up to the sixth month (as in
many communities they wait until a number of children are collected, so
to speak, before sending for the mohel, who may reside at quite a
distance), and in all of those witnessed he has never seen any
complications from adhesions; but cases of adhesion have been often
encountered from the second to the eighth year, and it has always been
the case, as a rule, that the older the child the greater the firmness
of the adhesion. In these cases the practice generally advised of using
a probe is not practicable, as the person is more apt to wound the sound
prepuce than to tear the adhesions; the practice most effectual is to
hold the glans firmly but gently with the thumb and forefinger of the
right hand, and then to draw the prepuce as firmly back with its fold
held in the forefinger and thumb of the other. It is a more expeditious
mode, and the least painful; by this method extensive adhesions can
readily be broken up; vaselin and a piece of fine lint should then be
interposed for a couple of days to prevent a re-adherence.

Another co-existing condition with phimosis, very often found, is a
shortening of the frenum. Dr. Jansen, out of 3700 soldiers of the
Belgian army, found 12.3 per cent. with this pathological condition and
2.5 per cent. with a narrow prepuce.[88]

Take the three conditions above enumerated,--phimosis, preputial
adhesions, and short frenum,--all are but a departure from a normal, in
a greater or less degree; and whether the resulting discomfort consists
in mere mechanical impediment to urination, erection, or as a factor in
nocturnal enuresis, dysuria, impotence, either through reflex action or
interference with emission, malposition of the urethral orifice during
copulation owing to any of these conditions, or in any of the nervous
derangements that may accompany this condition, or in the more serious
results, ending in positive deformity of body or limb, or in the
warping of moral sentiments, or, even further, in inducing insanity, it
cannot well be seen how the conditions that will certainly produce these
results, in a more or less degree, can ever, in any logical sense, be
considered a p