By many surgeons the idea of circumcision, unless connected with an immediate demand for interference,--such as a phimosis unmanageable by any other means, an induced phimosis from gonorrhoea or other irritation, syphilis in its initiatory sore, cancer or some such cause,--is looked upon as an unwarrantable operation, a procedure not only barbarous, painful, and dangerous, but one that directly interferes with the intentions of nature. The prepuce is by many looked upon as a physiological necessity to health and the enjoyment of life, which, if removed, is liable to induce masturbation, excessive venereal desire, and a train of other evils. The question then resolves itself, What is the real physiological status of this appendage, if it has any, and, if it is a physiological appendage, when does it merge into a pathological appendage? As by some it is held that the prepuce enjoys the same right to live and exist as the nose, ear, or a limb, which are only subject to amputation in case of a serious disease, they should be reminded that they are not taking into consideration that the nose and ear are calculated to warn us of danger, and that our legs are very useful; as even the great orator Demosthenes, by the timely and rapid use of his legs, was enabled to escape from a battle, where his oratory was of no avail against the illiterate javelins of the unscholarly Macedonians. If the prepuce only was endowed with an olfactory sense,--as, for instance, if a nervous filament from the first pair of nerves had been sent down alongside of the pneumogastric and then, by following the track of the mammary and epigastric arteries, had at last reached the prepuce, where the olfactory sense could have been turned on at will, like an incandescent lamp,--it might have been a very useful organ, as in that sense it could have scented danger from afar, if not from near, and enabled man to avoid any of the many dangers into which he unconsciously drops. But, seeing that the prepuce, to say nothing of being neither nose, eye, nor ear to warn one away from danger, or a leg to run away on after once in it, having not even the precautionary sensitiveness of a cat's moustachios, it cannot, in any way that we can see, be compared to any other useful part of the body. All attempts to find reasons for its existence that are of real benefit to man have so far proved unsatisfactory, and, unlike the reasons for its removal, are, as a rule, founded on speculation. To further reason out the why and wherefore of its existence or of its summary surgical execution, we must consider its shifting positions as to the effects it produces, as well as to its conditions at different ages, sitting on its case like an impartial jury in the case of some unconvicted but diabolically-inclined criminal.