Castration

“ For some years, however, castration has been employed as a remedy for certain disorders both in men and women, especially for hysteria in women. I admit here that, in an asylum which I superintend, I have castrated a veritable monster afflicted with constitutional mental disorders, taking advantage of the fact that he himself requested this operation to relieve him of pain in his seminal vesicles, but with the chief object of preventing the production of unfortunate children tainted with his hereditary complaint. ”

“ The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle in disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful neurotics. In Ferenczi’s excellent study we have seen how the boy recognized his totem in the animal which snaps at his little penis. When children learn about ritual circumcision they identify it with castration. To my knowledge the parallel in the psychology of races to this attitude of our children has not yet been drawn. ”

“ As I have before stated, the third method of castration embraces the processes in which the testicular envelopes are left intact, while it is the gland or cord which is submitted to the peculiar manipulations by which their structure, and therefore the secreting powers of the testicle, are so essentially modified. ”

“ The fact that castration can no longer be properly considered a punishment, is shown by the possibility of deliberately seeking the operation simply for the sake of convenience, as a preferable and most effective substitute for the adoption of preventive methods in sexual intercourse. ”

“ Correlative sexual characters.—Castration is the term applied to the extirpation of the sexual glands. When it takes place in infancy it causes a considerable change in the whole subsequent development of the body, especially in man, but also in woman. Man becomes more slender, preserves a high and infantile voice, and his sexual correlative characters develop incompletely or not at all. Eunuchs are men castrated, usually in infancy. To ensure more safety in their harems the Orientals not only remove the testicles but also the penis. ”

“ Daniel mixed up, however, somewhat inextricably, castration as a method of purifying the race, a method which can be carried out with the concurrence of the individual operated on, with castration as a punishment, to be inflicted for rape, sodomy, bestiality, pederasty and even habitual masturbation, the method of its performance, moreover, to be the extremely barbarous and primitive method of total ablation of the sexual organs. ”

“ The other two methods only effect a single act of union or its results, but castration affects all subsequent acts of sexual union and usually destroys the procreative power permanently.
Castration for various social and other purposes is an ancient and widespread practice, carried out on men and on animals. There has, however, been on the whole a certain prejudice against it when applied to men. Many peoples have attached a very sacred value to the integrity of the sexual organs. ”

“ Castration of the body in adult age cannot be expected to produce castration of the mind. Moll, Féré, Näcke, Bloch, Rohleder, Hirschfeld, are all either opposed to castration for inversion, or very doubtful as to any beneficial results. ”

“ For this reason, in persons who have been castrated at the same age, the subsequent course of development may vary to some degree, notwithstanding the apparent identity of the determining factor in each case. In some, the pelvis, the beard, the voice, and the mental qualities, develop in normal fashion; in others, there is interference with the development of one or all of these characters. In certain cases, the bodily structure is influenced by castration at an age when the mental development is no longer affected. ”

“ In many cases castration is no punishment at all, and indeed a positive benefit. In other cases, when inflicted against the subject's will, it may produce very disturbing mental effects, leading in already degenerate or unbalanced persons to insanity, criminality, and anti-social tendencies generally, much more dangerous than the original state. Eugenic considerations, which were later brought forward, constitute a much sounder argument for castration ”

“ My obesity is entirely due to castration, as slenderness is universal in my family.
After castration, ejaculations during sleep gradually declined in frequency, but continued, with the emission of a sticky fluid of the appearance of semen, for about nine months. But dreams of ejaculations—that is, a sort of pseudo-ejaculations—occurred about once a fortnight for several years, and about once in three months as late as fourteen years after castration. I would be dreaming of fellatio, and seemed to feel the muscular contractions that take place during ejaculation. ”

“ The most intense hereditary cases may constitute a plague for the individual and for society, and it is then that castration may become a blessing by calming the obsessed patient, by giving him the opportunity for useful occupation, and by preventing him from abusing his fellows and procreating beings similar to himself. ”

“ CLASSIFICATION OF THE METHODS — THREE CLASSES — FIRST, IMMEDIATE AMPUTATION — SECOND, AMPUTATION AFTER APPLICATION OF HEMOSTATIC MEANS UPON THE CORD — THIRD, WITHOUT AMPUTATION, BUT DESTRUCTION OF SECRETING POWER OF THE ORGAN — SIMPLE EXCISION — SCRAPING — TEARING AND TORSION — TORSION — FREE AND LIMITED — ABOVE OR BELOW THE EPIDIDYMIS — LINEAR CRUSHING — FIRING.
The methods of performing the operation of castration may be variously classified, though in each class a varying number of modes will come under our notice. ”

“ Others, finding themselves naturally impotent, consider it necessary to undergo the operation, to avoid being born again at a future birth in the same helpless state. The operation of castration is generally performed by a class of barbers, sometimes by some of the more intelligent of the eunuchs themselves, in the following manner. The patient is made to sit on an upturned new earthen pot, being previously well drugged with opium or bhang. ”

“ It has hardly been advocated, even by extremists, save for those whose sexual instincts are extremely disordered; but such advocacy is based on ignorance of the results. As a fact, castration frequently does not diminish the sexual impulses. ”

“ Among certain individuals, such as sadists, whose sexual appetite is dangerous in itself, castration would be necessary. In my opinion, the more benign operations are indicated in all individuals whose psychopathological condition in this domain is such that they are absolutely incapable of resisting their impulses, or of understanding the dictates of reason. ”

“ The number of pigs and the period of gestation are the same as in the domesticated herd, and their voices are much alike: the female, however, grunts more and the male less. The castration of the male makes them larger and more fierce, as Homer writes. "He brought up a castrated wild boar, which was not like a beast fed upon food, but resembled a woody mountain peak." Castration takes place from a disease like a swelling in the testicles, which they rub against the trees and so destroy them. ”

“ It has long been known that the development of male sex-characters is profoundly affected by the operation of castration. The removal of the testes is most easily carried out in Mammals, in consequence of the external position of the organs in these animals, and the operation has been practised on domesticated animals as well as on man himself from very ancient times. ”

“ When it is considered, again, that by the traction of the cord the superior opening of the inguinal canal is necessarily [13-
15] dilated, and the formation of a hernia of castration is liable to take place, we submit the point to the intelligent judgment, whether, in the presence of these possibilities of extremely dangerous accidents, it does not become the duty of the veterinarian to prefer the mode of securing his patient in the supine position, both in his own behalf and that of his employer. ”

“ When the mother or some other woman makes the threat she usually delegates the responsibility of executing it to the father or to the doctor. In the famous Struwelpeter by the pediatrist Hoffman, of Frankfort, rhymes which owe their popularity to his very fine understanding of the sexual and other complexes of childhood, you find a milder substitute for castration in the cutting off of the thumbs as a punishment for insistent sucking. But it is highly improbable that the threat of castration is actually made as often as it occurs in the analyses of neurotics. ”

“ There is a popular view, dating back to Aristotle and supported by many doctors and zoologists, that the castration of an animal is followed by the sudden appearance of the characters of the other sex; if the gelding of a male were to bring about the appearance of female characteristics then doubt would be thrown on the existence in every cell of a primordial sexuality independent of the genital glands. ”

“ Craze for Fellatio Diminishes. Down to seventeen years after castration, there has been no effect on my facial hair. Possibly it has thinned and made more tenuous the hair on trunk and limbs. The consequent deposit of adipose tissue has increased the prominence of my breasts, but before castration these were almost as large as in some women. The operation greatly increased the deleterious effect of fellatio on my health. One indulgence a week was more detrimental than a score a week during my “low-class fairie” period. ”

“ The varying views of different authors regarding the influence of castration in early life upon the development of the secondary sexual characters may readily be explained with reference to the individual differences that may be observed in the functional activity of the testicles in different males before the power of reproduction has been acquired. ”

“ An early castration does not, of course, result in the obliteration of all differences between the male and the female; we must rather say that a part only of the typical differential characters of sex remain undeveloped. The earlier assumption, that the secretion of semen competent to effect fertilisation influenced the development of the secondary sexual characters, has of late been more and more generally abandoned. ”

“ If in the castrated female a testicle is planted, the masculine traits become much more marked and striking. A direct exchange of the male and female rôles can thus be achieved. Castration after puberty cannot modify profoundly structures like the skeleton which are already completed. Yet it may unquestionably bring about definite retrogressive changes in the secondary sex characters: reduction or loss of virility, diminution of facial and body hair, and a general presenility or hastening of senility. ”

“ The spurs are the last of the male characters to develop, these at the age of four months being still mere nodules, scarcely, if at all, larger than the rudiments visible in adult hens. This is the age at which castration is usually performed, as at an earlier age the birds are too small to operate on successfully. It follows, therefore, that the spurs develop after castration, and it would seem that their development does not depend upon the presence of the sexual organs. It is a question, however, whether castration in the cock is ever quite complete. ”

“ The principal danger from castration has arisen from the severity with which the iron has been employed. The colt, the sheep, and the dog will be fair subjects for experiment. The cautery, as it regards the first, and the brutal violence too frequently resorted to in operating upon the others, have destroyed thousands of animals. ”

“ The young horse suffers less from castration than the old, and very rarely perishes. Good health in the subject is all important. Castration should never be attempted during the prevalence of strangles, influenza, catarrhal fever, contagious pleurisy, bronchitis, pneumonia, purpura hemorrhagica, or other specific disease, nor on subjects that have been kept in close, ill-ventilated, filthy buildings, where the system is liable to have been charged with putrid bacteria or other products. ”

“ Thus, in persons who were castrated in the eighth or ninth year of life, we note the presence of definite secondary sexual characters, which are, indeed, less strongly developed than in normal persons, but which do not appear at all when the castration has been effected at a still earlier age. ”

“ The original idea of the ablation of the phallus was to emasculate the victim; investigation developed the idea that the same object could be accomplished by castration, an operation which also finally reached a tolerable state of perfection through different stages of evolution, it first being performed by a complete removal of the whole scrotum and contents. This operation, with the ignorance of the times in regard to stopping hæmorrhage, was, however, accompanied by a large mortality, and it finally evolved into the simple removal of the gland, or its obliteration by pressure or violence. ”

“ The germ glands are really not the sexuality, and the experience with castrated males only verifies what we had long before learned from the removal of the ovaries, namely that it is impossible to do away with the sexual character by removing the germ glands. To be sure, castration performed at a tender age, before puberty, comes nearer to this aim, but it would seem in this case that besides the loss of the sexual glands we must also consider the inhibition of development and other factors which are connected with that loss. ”