"A. L., aged two, admitted November 28, 1877. Quite well nourished, but pale. Complete retention of urine for two days; slight redness and marked oedema of penis, scrotum, and perineum. The foreskin cannot be retracted, on account of phimosis. Abdomen distended, hard, and sensitive, the dilated bladder extending a few fingers' breadth above the symphysis. In order to introduce the catheter, it was first necessary to operate upon the phimosis, during which a calculus, which completely occluded the meatus, was removed. The catheter, when introduced into the bladder, removed a quantity of cloudy urine. The oedema, rapidly disappeared under applications of lead-wash, but on November 29th vomiting and diarrhoea occurred during the night, with rapid collapse; December 1st, death. Autopsy: In the bladder, a sulphur-yellow stone, as large as a hen's egg, completely filling the organ; similar calculi, from the size of a pea to that of a bean, in the pelvis of the left kidney; right kidney normal." In the above case, the oedema of the penis, scrotum, and perineum was as much a result of the distension of the bladder by the retained urine interfering with the return circulation from the oedematous parts as the different appearances of diseased conditions were a result of the primary phimosis; yet this case, if seen during its early infancy, when probably the contraction of the preputial orifice was as yet not so well marked, would have been pronounced one in which it would be needless and barbarous to perform circumcision upon. We would most assuredly have to wander aimlessly and unprofitably in the region of speculation to build up the etiology of the above-related case and reach the culmination there found, unless we accept the one that it was all, from first to last, the result of the phimosis.