Plastic surgery is always a fascinating subject on account of the technical difficulties involved, the uncertainty of the result, the exercise of one's ingenuity, and the satisfaction of success, if any, both to the surgeon and to the patient. Few attempts were made before the days of anesthesia. Plastic surgery has been done extensively since then. Most of the plastic work on the urethra and penis has been reported by European surgeons. I have been able to find the report of only a few cases by surgeons in America.
Many methods have been described, most of them being for reconstruction in congenital defects; namely, hypospadias and epispadias. A few of them are for reconstruction of defects in acquired conditions. In the literature one finds listed many different kinds of material used as transplants with which to reconstruct the urethra. One of the most unusual reports was by Springle,1 who in