Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On masturbation and hysteria in young children. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![toins from the reual pelvis, lu six out of forty necropsies of cliildren under a year, made in a certain period iu the same pub- lic institution, I found renal calculi. Although this figure can- not by far be taken as anything like a true proportion, it proves, nevertheless, that stone in children quite young is not rare at all. Besides, the experience of specialists has always proven that the histories of vesical calculi date in many cases far back into early childhood. Nor is gravel by any means veiy rare. Many of the hard screaming spells of babies, so willingly attri- buted to flatulency, naughtiness, or teething, find on cloBO examination their easy explanation in the condition of the urine. Catarrh of the bladder is a very frequent affection ; even a number of cases of incontinence of urine take their origin from that condition of the mucous membrane, with its subsequent effect upon the nerve distributions. Sometimes it is itself the progenitor of a ureteric or renal catarrh; more fre- quently, particularly in girls, it is the effect of a catarrh of the external parts. For leucorrhcBa—from a number of causes—is a very frequent affection. In the very young, the presence of hardened vernix in the vagina and cervix, in the somewhat older, of decomposed irrine, or foreign bodies, or exposure, or an accidental abrasion, result in a catari-h of the vagina, with all its harmful privileges upon the condition of neighboring mucous membranes and nerves. Generally'', long duration malves it a disagreeable and uncomfortable affection, both in it- self and its possible consequences. Urethral catarrh in the young- male is rare, but balanitis and balanoposthitis are very frequent, and ready causes of irritation. Their sources are both evident and numerous. The prepuce is long and frequently narrow. It need not even be very long, but still its lower blade and the surface of the glans penis are apt to be moist with fresh or animoniacal urine. When it is narrow, the facilities for that discomfort are the greater; when it is very much so, the prepuce will often be pouched out during the emission of the urine, and micturition be effected drop by drop. The sebaceous follicles of the inside of the prepuce are very large—as they are all over the embryo and very young infant—and smegma very copious indeed. Thus its decomposition and the formation of i]-ritating fat-acids are but the matter of a short time. If T add to all this the sometimes irregular attachment of the pre-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2101890x_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
