Dr. J. D. Griffith, of Kansas City, Mo., operated on a case of phimosis on a child nearly three years of age, who was afflicted with repeated attacks of convulsions and paralysis of the hips and lower extremities; the little fellow had as many as fifteen convulsions in a day; the patient was greatly troubled with painful urination and priapism. On examination at the operation, a firmly adherent prepuce and a large roll of caseous matter was found just back of the corona. A complete recovery followed the removal of these conditions. The above cases are taken from the paper read before the Section of Diseases of Children at the International Medical Congress of 1887, by Dr. Sayre. It contains a number of additional cases of an analogous character to the above, reported to him by physicians in different parts of the country. They show the variety, extent, and far-reaching character of the diseases induced by any preputial irritation. Dr. G. L. Magruder, of Washington, D. C., in the same paper, has a record of twenty-five cases of various nervous disturbances which he had entirely relieved by circumcision or dilatation, without any medication whatever. Dr. Magruder, in concluding his report, in which he quotes the authority of Brown-Sequard, Charcot, and Leyden, as having noticed serious nervous disturbances resulting from reflex irritation due to affections of the genito-urinary organs, observes as follows:-- "From the foregoing, I think that we are justified in the conclusion that phimosis and adherent prepuce give rise to varied troubles of more or less gravity, manifesting themselves either in the muscular, osseous, or nervous systems; and that the removal of these abnormal conditions of the penis frequently affords marked relief, and, at times, perfect and permanent cure." In the discussion that followed the reading of Dr. Sayre's paper, Dr. De Forest Willard, of Philadelphia, remarked that he had operated by simply stripping back the prepuce and that he did not circumcise, but that he looked upon the subsequent cleanliness of the parts as the greatest safeguard, not only as against reflex irritation, but also against masturbation. Retained filth and smegma are far more likely to call a boy's attention to his penis by their unrecognized irritative effects than washing can possibly do. His practice is in accordance with the belief that young children can be relieved by the simpler methods, such as dilatation; but he also observes that when a child has reached eight or ten years of age, and has never been able to expose the glans, contraction is almost certain to be present, and circumcision must be performed. In adults there is rarely any escape when the prepuce is tight.