It has occurred to Dr. _Baillie_,[297] and other anatomists, to observe the testicles exceedingly small, “I have known,” says this distinguished pathologist, “one case in a person of middle age, where each of them was not larger than the extremity of the finger of an adult; this, as appeared from its history, arose from a fault in the original formation, and was attended with a total want of the natural propensities.” Mr. _Wilson_,[298] on the other hand, relates a case that would induce us to pause before we pronounced judgment on such an occasion: “I was,” says he, “some years ago consulted by a gentleman, on the point of marriage, respecting the propriety of his entering that state, as his penis and testicles very little exceeded in size those of a youth of eight years of age. He was then six and twenty, but never had felt the desire for sexual intercourse until he became acquainted with his intended wife; since that period, he had experienced repeated erections, attended with nocturnal emissions; he married, became the father of a family, and these parts which at six and twenty years of age were so much smaller than usual, at twenty-eight had increased nearly to the usual size of those of an adult man.” The structure of the testicle may be defective; Mr. _John Hunter_ has given a representation,[299] in his work on the Animal Œconomy, of a case in which the _Epididymis_, instead of passing to a _Vas deferens_, terminated in a cul-de-sac; with such a structure it is evident that the semen cannot be evacuated by the urethra, and that the individual must therefore be incurably impotent. The structure of these organs may be so destroyed by a bruise, as to occasion impotence. This was formerly the mode adopted in the oriental courts for destroying masculine efficiency in the attendants of the Haram; and it is said that the Algerines, who are unwilling to castrate their horses, have recourse to this process, in order to render them incapable of procreation;[300] while it is well known that Park-keepers, who have the management of deer, annul the power of generating in bucks, by squeezing the testicles forcibly, and thus destroying their organization and secerning faculty.[301] Atrophy and wasting of the testicles may also result from local injury; Dr. _Pihorel_[302] relates an interesting case of this kind that occurred to an old soldier.