a. Inflammation of the testicle is a common occurrence; but nevertheless, rarely a subject of cadaveric investigation. It may be either primary, secondary, or metastatic.

It may also be acute, or, as is more frequently the case, chronic; it either attacks the entire testicle, or the epididymis, or single lobules of the former chiefly. Accordingly, the tumefaction of the organ is either uniform or irregular; its tissue is at first more or less reddened, injected, and according to the coagulability of the inflammatory product, either firmer or looser than in the normal condition.

Acute inflammation not unfrequently passes into suppuration; the chronic form more frequently ends in induration and permanent enlargement of the organ. The orchitic abscess not unfrequently discharges externally by one or more openings, after inducing perforation of the tunica albuginea, and of the agglutinated lamellae of the tunica vaginalis. The inflammatory product becomes more or less organized, and converted into a fibroid cartilaginous mass, and the resulting induration induces atrophy of the testicle.

b. Chronic inflammation affecting the tunica albuginea, and its processes, in rare cases induces considerable thickening of this fibrous sheath, hypertrophy of the fibro-cellular tissue within the testicle, enlargement and morbid induration of the latter, and finally atrophy of its proper tissue.

The progress of inflammations of the testicle would appear to be sometimes impeded, and a cure brought on, by the pressure which an effusion into the tunica vaginalis exerts.