In the first volume of the _Journal of Venereal and Cutaneous Diseases_ the writer reported a case of the complete loss of penis in a young man as a result of phagedena due to syphilis. The man had had a long and pendulous prepuce; in his case, had circumcision been performed in early childhood, it would have lessened the chances of primary infection, and had it been performed after his infection, it would have removed one cause--if not the principal cause--of the ease with which the phagedenic action was inaugurated. The case already mentioned as an example of spontaneous and natural circumcision belongs to the gangrenous results following phimosis, ending with the loss of the prepuce. In Maclise's "Surgical Anatomy" several specimens of deformity are figured, showing the results of this mildest of the effects of a phagedenic action. The beginning of the interference in the return preputial circulation undoubtedly always takes place over the superior aspect of the corona, where the pressure of the glans is most sharply defined against the inner fold of the prepuce. There are milder conditions, wherein the circulation of the prepuce is materially interfered with, both through the lax tissues of the parts and the peculiar anatomical construction and shape of the neighboring parts, wherein, without going as far as gangrenous breakdown, the person suffers considerably nevertheless, and is placed in danger of losing his penis; for, as observed by Patissier, whenever a person affected with a gonorrhoea is attacked by a putrid or any low-grade fever, he runs the greatest danger of losing his virile member through gangrene. Even where phimosis does not exist, but only the long, lax, and retractable prepuce, that is considered a perfectly physiological condition, the prepuce is liable to cause very distressing and complicating annoyances during the progress of other diseases. The writer has noticed that cases with a thick, leathery, and redundant prepuce, even when perfectly retractable, are more liable to require the use of the catheter during the course of a continued fever. Such a condition is also a very frequent accompaniment of prostatic obstruction. So often has this been noticed that its association with prostatic trouble or disease tends to the belief that the irritation produced by this condition of prepuce often lays the foundation for prostatic disease in not a few cases.[100] In elderly people, with the atrophied penis and elongating prepuce, the constant moisture from the urine on the inner fold and glans adds greatly to the irritation as well as to the discomfort of the patient.