ABSTRACT
In any consideration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a person, and of the qualities he exhibited in relation to other people, especially his irascibility, which led too often to serious quarrels with people who had been his friends, and of whom these quarrels made enemies, it is vital continually to bear in mind the complaint from which he suffered all his life. This trouble, which no doubt would have been easily cleared up by operative treatment today and which, with other weaknesses, at his birth made his life hang by a thread and necessitated the devoted care of his aunt Suson in order that he should live, was retention of urine in the bladder, i.e. failure of the bladder to empty itself.
