even with a surgical bearing, I remark that the prostatic or rudimentary uterus, like a germ not wholly blighted, is prone to an occasional sprouting or increase beyond its prescribed dimensions--a hypertrophy in barren imitation, as it were, of gestation. [Footnote] [Footnote: This expression of the fact to which I allude will not, I trust, be extended beyond the limits I assign to it. Though I have every reason to believe, that between the prostate of the male and the uterus of the female, the same amount of analogy exists, as between a coccygeal ossicle and the complete vertebral form elsewhere situated in the spinal series, I am as far from regarding the two former to be in all respects structurally or functionally alike, as I am from entertaining the like idea in respect to the two latter. But still I maintain that between a prostate and a uterus, as between a coccygeal bone and a vertebra, the only difference which exists is one of quantity, and that hence arises the functional difference. A prostate is part of a uterus, just as a coccygeal bone is part (the centrum) of a vertebra. That this is the absolute signification of the prostate I firmly believe, and were this the proper place, I could prove it in detail, by the infallible rule of analogical reasoning. John Hunter has observed that the use of the prostate was not sufficiently known to enable us to form a judgment of the bad consequences of its diseased state. When the part becomes morbidly enlarged, it acts as a mechanical impediment to the passage of urine from the bladder, but from this circumstance we cannot reasonably infer, that while of its normal healthy proportions, its special function is to facilitate the egress of the urine, for the female bladder, though wholly devoid of the prostate, performs its own function perfectly. It appears to me, therefore, that the real question should be, not what is the use of the prostate? but has it any proper function? If the former question puzzled even the philosophy of Hunter, it was because the latter question must be answered in the negative. The prostate has no function proper to itself per se. It is a thing distinct from the urinary apparatus, and distinct likewise from the generative organs. It may be hypertrophied or atrophied, or changed in texture, or wholly destroyed by abscess, and yet neither of the functions of these two systems of organs will be impaired, if the part while diseased act not as an obstruction to them. In texture the prostate is similar to an unimpregnated uterus. In form it is, like the uterus, symmetrical. In position it corresponds to the uterus. The prostate has no ducts proper to itself. Those ducts which are said to belong to it (prostatic ducts) are merely mucous cells, similar to those in other parts of the urethral lining membrane. The seminal ducts evidently do not belong to it. The texture of the prostate is not such as appears in glandular bodies generally.