HISTORY OF EMASCULATION, CASTRATION, AND EUNUCHISM.
For the earliest records in regard to emasculation we must go back to
mythological relations. In the old legendary lore of ancient Scandinavia
or of Germany, the loves and hatreds of their semi-mythological heroes
and heroines space over many romantic incidents before reaching a
culmination. The swiftly flowing Rhine, with its precipitous banks,
eddies, and rapids; the broad and more majestic Danube or Elb; the broad
meadows and Druidical groves on its hilly slopes and stretches of dark
and gloomy forest,--all conspired to people the fancy with elfs, gnomes,
fairies, and goblins, who were more or less intermingled in all the
episodes that engaged their semi-mythological heroes. This helped to
fill in all their deeds with entertaining incidents; their halls and
castles were made necessary accessories by the rigors of the climate, as
well as were the beery feasts and carousals with the inspiration of
monotonous song also rendered necessaries by the same element; hence, we
have various incidents, either entertaining or exciting, connected with
their legendary tales, acting like periods of intermission between their
love scenes, spites, hatreds, murders, and general cremations. From such
material and such opportunities it was comparatively easy for Wagner to
construct the thrilling and interesting incidents that compose his opera
on the legend of the Nibelungenlied.
The Grecian landscape and topography does not permit of such richness of
romantic incidents or details, any more than the love-making of the
unfortunate spider who is devoured by his spidery Cleopatra at the end
of his first sexual embrace could furnish any incidents for one of
Amelie Rives's spirited novels; so that neither minstrel nor bard have
recorded the details of the first emasculating tragedy, which from all
accounts was a kind of an Olympian Donnybrook-fair sort of a
paricidal-ending tragedy.
Unfortunately, Homer was not there to describe the event, or we might
have had a Wagnerian opera with its Plutonic music to illustrate all its
incidents; or even a Virgil could have made it into interesting verses;
but, as it is, we must content ourselves with the laconic recitals that
have been handed down by tradition, and, as all the Greek performances
of those days were marked by an intense decisiveness, with an utter lack
of circumlocution, it is probable that there was not much to relate
beyond the bare facts.
In Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biographies and Mythology" we
find it related that Uranos, or Coelus, was the progenitor of all the
Grecian gods. His first children were the Centimanes; his next progeny
were the Cyclops, who were imprisoned in Tartarus because of their great
strength. This so angered their mother, Gaea, that she incited her
next-born children, the Titans, into a rebellion against their father,
Uranos. In the general turmoil that followed Uranos was deposed, and, so
that he would be incapable of begetting any more children, Saturnus, the
youngest of his sons, with a sickle made from a bright diamond,
successfully emasculated poor old Uranos. The records are not clear
whether the operation only included the penis, or the scrotum and
contents, or whether, like the Turkish or Chinese _taille a fleur de
ventre_, Saturnus made a clean sweep of all the genitals; it is
probable that he did, however, as the members fell into the sea, and in
the foam caused by the commotion from their contact with the element
Venus was born. Meanwhile, the blood that dripped from the wounded
surface caused the Giants, the Furies, and the Melian nymphs to spring
into life. Uranos is also represented as being the first king of
Atlantis; so that the first eunuch was a god and a king, more
unfortunate than any of Doran's heroes, in his "Monarchs Retired from
Business," because he was more effectually retired from business than
any monarch that Doran records.
After this the practice seems to have been adopted in a general way; and
the fact that the future proceedings of men and things on earth do not
much interest these unfortunate members of society in any great degree,
interest in worldly affairs and testicles seemingly having been as
intimately connected in those early and remote days as with us of the
present, it very naturally followed that this disinterestedness, as well
as the docility and pliability which emasculation engenders, first
suggested their use as servants or in position of trust, as a eunuch,
having no incentive either to run away or to embezzle, would naturally
be a valued and trusted servant. In the days of eunuchism there were no
defaulting bank, city, or county cashiers,--a circumstance which would
suggest that such a condition should form one of the qualifications for
eligibility to such offices, the very opposition to any such proposal
that the class would make showing in itself the benefits that would
follow such an innovation, as it would show that the class is not
possessed with that total spirit of abnegation requisite in the
guardians of public funds. The requirement might be extended to
bank-presidents with benefit, if some Cincinnati episodes are any
criterion. It is safe to assume that the bank that could advertise, in
connection with its attractive quarterly or semi-annual statement, that
the president and cashier were properly attested and vouched-for eunuchs
would find in the public such a recognition of the fitness of things
that the patronage it would receive would soon compel other banks to
follow the example. The procedure might, with national benefit, be
extended as an ordeal to our legislators at the national capitol, as it
would do away with the particular influential lobby so graphically
described in Mark Twain's "Gilded Age." These things or ideas are merely
thrown out as suggestions to be used by those who write those
interesting articles in the _Forum_, or the _North American_ or
_Fortnightly Reviews_, on government and social reforms, as a perusal of
the many articles written in that direction will convince any one that,
from a practical psychological view of the matter, they are sadly
deficient. To make those articles effective the reflex impressions made
by the animal on the psychological and moral nature of man should not be
neglected.
Semiramis, whose beauty and many accomplishments, assisted by the
murders of several of her husbands by the hand of the succeeding one,
had this subject in hand in a far more practical manner than it is
generally forced on the understanding; hence we see that she was the
first to introduce the use of eunuchs in the capacity of servants as
well as in official positions in and about the palace, as well as
trusting some of the positions of the highest importance to the class.
From her epoch, eunuchism has become an inseparable attendant on
Oriental despotism, and has so continued to the present day. Like yellow
fever, phthisis, and some diseases, as well as many other social
afflictions and customs, eunuchism does not seem to flourish beyond
certain degrees of north and south latitudes,--a fact that probably
assisted Montesquieu to arrive at the conclusion that climate was a
powerful factor in all things.
Bergmann, of Strasburg, quotes the ancient traditions, wherein it is
stated that man was taught the art of castration by the brute creation.
The hyena is cited as having so instructed man by the habit it exhibited
of castrating its infant males in removing the testicles with its teeth,
the habit being instigated by a jealousy, for fear of future competition
in the exercise of the procreative act on the part of the young males.
Another tradition attributes its origin to the castor. Bergmann here
traces out the etymological relation existing between the name of the
operation and that of the animal with that of a Greek verb that forms
the root of _castrum_, or camp; _casa_, or house; _castigare_, to
arrange; from whence also is traced _cosmos_, the world; _kastorio_, the
Greek for wishing to build, and the Latin _kasturio_ having the same
relative but a more imperative signification; _kastor_, signifying as
loving to build; _castitiator_, Latin for architect, and _casticheur_,
old French for constructor. The tale or tradition in regard to the
self-mutilation inflicted by the castor is traced to the Arabian
merchants who purchased the castoreum, which was imported from the
shores of the Persian Gulf and from India. It was called, also, by the
Arabs, _chuzyalu-l-bahhr_, or testicles from beyond the sea; or, in
French, _testicules d'outre mer_. These terms and the tradition that the
castor on being pursued, knowing the reason of the chase, was in the
habit of tearing out his testicles and throwing them at his pursuers,
were invented by these merchants to heighten the price and value of the
article intrinsically, as well as to make it more interesting by this
peculiar individuality of adventure. The Latins, believing and adopting
the tradition as a matter of fact, coined the word _castorare_, or doing
like the castor. Bergmann uses in this connection a number of terms in
French to denote different forms or degrees of this mutilation which
have no equivalents in English,--for instance, _chatrure_, as applied to
animals, making also a distinctive difference between the meaning of the
French words _castration_ and _chatrement_. Bergmann is a decided
evolutionist as regards circumcision being evolved from prior forms of
physical mutilation, as will be more fully explained in the next
chapter; the shaving of the head of a conquered people by the Hindoos,
or the shearing the royal locks of the ancient Frankish kings; the
blinding of one eye of their slaves by the old Scythians, or crippling
one foot by the division of a tendon in a captive by the Goths, he
considers as on the same line with the idea that led to castration, the
different forms of eunuchism, and circumcision.[31]
From a purely materialistic and utilitarian view of the subject, he
observes that what we call moral progress and civilization owe their
advancement more to material interest and cold, selfish calculation than
to any development of the humanitarian sentiments, and that neither
morality nor justice has much to do with it. The evolution of the slave
and the marks inflicted upon him by his fellow humans are the most
emphatic evidences of the justness of the above proposition. The study
of the subject is equally interesting when considered in connection with
the evolutions of the Christian Church. In its divergence from Judaism
and its beneficent laws, both social and moral, the Christian Church was
but illy fit to cope with its persecutors of Pagan tendencies, or to
enforce an unwritten law or code of morality or hygiene among an
idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to
encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has
been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable
condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass to guide them in the
path that was possessed by the Jewish people. The martyrdom of Christ
and many of his apostles, and the teachings of the early church, pointed
to physical denials, castigations, humiliations, and sufferings as the
only way to salvation; all pleasures were sin and all denials and pain
were looked upon as steps to heaven. The climate pointed to sexual
indulgence as the sum of all happiness, as can readily be inferred from
the Mohammedan idea of heaven; so, with the early Christians who were
born in the same climates, the denials of sexual pleasures were looked
upon as the most acceptable offering that man could make to the Deity.
Continence, celibacy, infibulation, and even castration were the
conditions looked upon by many of these men as the only means of living
a life on earth that would grant them an eternal life in the next. This
view of the situation peopled the deserts with a lot of men dwelling in
caves and in huts, living on such a scarce diet that they barely
existed. That many went insane, and in their frenzy died while roaming
in these solitudes, we have ample evidence. The tortures and impositions
of the Pagan rulers also drove many to this life or death.
Religious mania has caused many cases of self-mutilation, either to
escape continued promptings and desires, or simply from a resulting
species of insanity. Of the first, Sernin[33] reported to the Medical
Society of Paris the case of a young priest who had castrated himself
with the blade of a pair of scissors, and who nearly lost his life with
the subsequent haemorrhage. The writer saw an analogous case on board an
American war-vessel, of which Dr. Lyon was surgeon, in the harbor of
Havre, in the spring of 1871, the subject being the ship's cobbler, a
religious fanatic, who was driven insane by self-imposed continence. We
are not surprised, from the lack of intelligence of the times, the
extreme but undefined views as to religion that then ruled men, that
self-imposed castration should have been sanely considered and carried
into effect by Origines and his monks. The Cybelian priesthood had
formerly set the example in their Pagan worship, and when we are told
that the monks of Mount Athos accused the monks of the convent of a
neighboring island with falling away from grace, because they allowed
_hens_ to be kept within the convent inclosure, we may well believe that
Origines and his monks felt that they were gradually ascending in grace
when they submitted to this sacrifice. As strange as it may sound,
self-castration is still practiced by the Skoptsy, a religious sect in
Russia. In justice to the Church, however, it must be said that she
neither asked for nor did she sanction these performances, although she
was not quick enough in asserting that she recognized the same law in
regard to her presbytery that controlled that of the Hebraic priesthood.
Eunuchism presents many contradictory conditions; eunuchs have not
always been the fat and sleek attendants on Oriental harems as tradition
and custom places them or would have us believe; neither does the loss
of virility, in a procreative sense, seem to have always robbed them of
their virility in other senses, as we find eunuchs holding the highest
offices in the State under the reigns of Alexander, the Ptolemys,
Lysimachus, Mithrades, Nero, and Arcadius. The eunuch Aristonikos, under
one of the Ptolemys, and another, Narces, under Justinian, led the
armies of their sovereigns. These are, however, exceptional cases; as a
rule, the result is as we observe in the domestic animals,--loss of
spirit, vim, and ambition. The Church recognized this result, and, while
the Hebraic law excluded eunuchs from participating in the priesthood as
being imperfect and unclean, the Church reproached Origines and his
monks and excluded eunuchs from its presbytery on the ground that such
beings lack the moral and physical energy requisite in a calling that is
supposed to guide or lead men; moreover, there are many reasons for
doubting that the ministers of state and the generals of the reigns
above mentioned were actually eunuchs in the full acceptance of the
word. Among the ancients there were several methods of performing the
operations that made the eunuchs; some were more effectual than others.
From the removal of _all_ the genitals, or the penis alone, or the
scrotum and testicles, or removing only the testicles, down to
compression or to distorting the spermatic vessels, or, as in the case
of the Scythians, who often became eunuchs from bareback riding, as
Hammond describes a eunuchism manufactured by our southwestern Indians
of New Mexico and Arizona, are performances that left many degrees of
eunuchism; as we find some eunuchs that not only contracted marriage,
but engendered children. Voltaire mentions Kislav-aga, of
Constantinople, a eunuch _a outrance_, with neither penis, scrotum, nor
anything, who owned a large and select harem. Montesquieu, in his
"Persian Letters," admits this class of marriages as being practiced,
but doubts the resulting conjugal felicity, especially on the part of
the wife. Potiphar's wife was one of these unfortunate wives; no wonder
that she tore Joseph's cloak in her desire. Juvenal mentions that some
eunuchs were held in high esteem by the Roman matrons; it possibly could
have been some of this kind of a eunuch that led armies or ruled in the
palaces. Among the sultans and Oriental potentates those who had every
exterior evidence of virility removed, so as to be obliged to micturate
through the means of a catheter, were considered the safest guards, as
well as they were the highest-priced eunuchs, for in their manufacture
fully 75 per cent. of those operated upon died as a result. It is
related that the Caribs made eunuchs of their prisoners of war on the
same principle that caponizing is resorted to for our kitchens,--the
prisoners were easier to fatten and were more tender when cooked. The
Italians allowed their children to be eunuchized for chorister purposes
in church services, their soprano voices after this treatment being
simply perfect. It was considered that, in the year prior to the papal
ordinance of Pope Clement XVI forbidding the practice or the employment
of eunuchs in choirs, four thousand boys, mostly in the neighborhood of
Rome, were castrated for chorister purposes.
In China eunuchs were in use during the reign of the Emperor Yen-Wang,
in 781 B.C. The Chinese make their eunuchs by a complete ablation of all
genitals. In India the followers of Brahma never placed their women in
charge of eunuchs. In Italy it was customary to emasculate boys that
they might grow up with the faculty of taking the female parts in
comedies, their voices thereby assimilating to that of the other sex,
this being on the same principle that the _basso-profundos_ were
infibulated that they might retain their bass.
Eunuchism resulting from an operation owing to disease has at times
given queer and unlooked-for results, as, for instance, in the case of
the old man that Sprengle mentions, in whom castration did not remove an
inordinate sexual desire. Sir Astley Cooper mentions a case in his
"Diseases of the Testes" that is somewhat unique. After castration Sir
Astley's patient showed the following results: "For nearly the first
twelve months he stated that he had emissions _in coitu_, or that he had
the sensations of emission; that then he had erections and coitus at
distant intervals, but without the sensation of emission. After two
years he had excretions very rarely and very imperfectly, and they
generally ceased immediately upon the attempt at coitus. Ten years after
the operation he said he had during the past year been only once
connected. Twenty-eight years after the operation he stated that for
years he had seldom any excretion, and then that it was imperfect." In
regard to the mortality from castration done in a professional manner
and for disease, Curling, in his work on "Diseases of the Testis,"
observes that he saw or performed some thirty operations without a
death, and that in a table of like operations performed at the Hotel
Dieu, in Paris, it appeared that the mortality was one in four and a
quarter.
J. Royes Bell, in the sixth volume of the "International Encyclopaedia of
Surgery," has the following in regard to the practice among the
Mohammedans in India: "Young boys are brought from their parents, and
the entire genitals are removed with a sharp razor. The bleeding is
treated by the application of herbs and hot poultices; haemorrhage kills
half the victims, and at times brings the perpetrators of the vile
proceeding within the clutches of the law."
The _taille a fleur de ventre_ of the Chinese is a somewhat primitive
procedure. According to Dr. Morache, in his account of China in the
"Dic. Ency. des Sciences Medicales," the operation is as follows: "The
patient, be he adult or child, is, previous to the operation, well fed
for some time. He is then put in a hot water bath. Pressure is exercised
on the penis and testes, in order to dull sensibility. The two organs
are compressed into one packet, the whole encircled with a silk band,
regularly applied from the extremity to the base, until the parts have
the appearance of a long sausage. The operator now takes a sharp knife,
and with one cut removes the organ from the pubis; an assistant
immediately applies to the wound a handful of styptic powder, composed
of odoriferous raisins, alum, and dried puffball powder
(boletus-powder). The assistant continues the compression till
haemorrhage ceases, adding fresh supplies of the astringent powders; a
bandage is added and the patient left to himself. Subsequent haemorrhage
rarely occurs, but obliteration of the canal of the urethra is to be
dreaded. If at the end of the third or fourth day the patient does not
make water, his life is despaired of. In children the operation succeeds
in two out of three cases; in adults, in one-half less. Poverty is the
cause which induces adults to allow themselves to be thus mutilated. It
is said to be difficult to distinguish these last from ordinary Chinese
men. Adult-made eunuchs are much sought after, as they present all the
attributes of virility without any of its inconvenience."
The study of the evolutionary moves or processes passed by eunuchism in
its relation to music and the drama tends to rob these otherwise
civilizing and enlightened arts of the aureoles of poetry and gentility
with which they have been surrounded. From Bergmann we learn that the
practice originated in the Orient, where female voices were held in
higher esteem in singing, and where the profane songs that accompanied
the dance were chanted by women. The Hebraic regulations permitted
neither women nor eunuchs to sing in their temples. With the
establishment of the early Christian Church in Oriental countries, more
or less of the ancient Judaic customs were retained, and in addition a
too literal interpretation of the words of St. Paul was adhered to,
which said that women should not be _heard_ in the Church. The Oriental
Church from these reasons long remained in a quandary; according to the
ceremonials, it was deemed requisite to imitate as near as possible the
voices of the angelic seraphims, and this could not be done by the
rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the
question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a
compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a
most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of
Cybele, had done before him.
Constantinople became the centre of learning for Greek music, and the
fine soprano solos which now form the attraction of many of our modern
churches were sung by the eunuchs. Eunuchs were not only the chief
singers, but they cultivated the art into a science, and Constantinople
furnished through this class the music-teachers for the world, as we
learn that in 1137 the eunuch Manuel and two other singers of his order
established a school of music and singing in Smolensk, Russia. There is
no doubt but that in a moral sense, considering that women are generally
the pupils, this was a most meet and an appropriate arrangement; for,
as St. Alphonsus M. Liquori observed, man was a fool to allow his
daughters or female wards to be taught letters by a man, even if that
man were a saint, and, as real saints were not to be found outside of
heaven, it can well be imagined how much more dangerous it might be to
have them taught music and singing by a man not a eunuch,--elements
which have a recognized special aphrodisiac virtue, as was well known to
the ancient Greeks, who only allowed their wives to listen to a certain
form of music when they (the husbands) were absent from home.
There is not much room for doubt but that both morality and medicine
have too much neglected the study and contemplation of the natural
history of man, and relied altogether too much on the efficacy of church
regulations and castor-oil and rhubarb. There are other things to be
done besides simply framing moral codes and pouring down mandrake into
the stomach; the old conjoined service of priest and doctor should never
have been discontinued, as, by dividing duties that are inseparable,
much harm has resulted. Herein dwelt the great benefit of the early
practice of medicine among the Greeks, and to the physical understanding
and supervision of human nature by the Hebraic law may be said that the
creed owes its greatness and stability, and the Hebrew race its sturdy
stamina. The wisdom of the Mosaic laws is something that always
challenges admiration, the secret being that it did not separate the
moral from the physical nature of man. Bain, Maudsley, Spencer, Haeckle,
Buckle, Draper, and all our leading sociologists base all their
arguments on the intimate relations that exist between the physical
surrounding and the physical condition of man and his morality. Churches
foolishly ignore all this.
From Constantinople the fashion or custom gradually invaded Italy; and
as Rome was the centre of the new religion, so it also became the centre
of music, and Rome and Naples were soon the home of the eunuch devoted
or immolated to the science of music. The eunuchs reached the height of
their renown in music, as well as what might be termed their golden era,
with the establishment of the Italian opera, in the seventeenth century.
At this period all the stages of Italy were the scenes of the lyric
triumphs of this otherwise unfortunate class, some of whom accumulated
vast fortunes. In the following century, as has been seen, Clement XVI
abolished the practice as far as the church was concerned, and in the
present century the first Napoleon abolished the practice secularly and
socially. Mankind cannot sufficiently appreciate the benefits it
received from the results of the French Revolution; we are too apt to
look at that event simply from the unavoidable means which an uneducated
class--rendered desperate by long suffering and brutalization under an
organized system of oppressive misrule--had adopted to remedy existing
evils. After the dissolution of the Directory France cannot be said to
have been in a state of anarchy, and the long and bloody wars with which
Napoleon is usually blamed should rather be charged to that government
and imbecile ministerial policy that lost to England the American
colonies. The series of battles from Marengo to Waterloo are as much the
creation of the cabinet of George III as those from Concord to Yorktown.
Waterloo involved more than the simple defeat of Napoleon; it meant the
defeat of moral and intellectual progress, as well as the suppression of
the rights of man. The suppression of the Inquisition in Spain, and of
eunuchism in Italy; the Code Napoleon; the Imperial highways of France;
the construction of its harbors,--notably that of Havre; and the
political and social emancipation of the Jews in France, Italy, and
Germany are monuments to this great man that have not their equals to
crown the acts of any other French monarch. Like the Phrygian monk who
leaped into the arena in Rome to separate the maddened gladiators, and
who was stoned to death by the angry and brutal mob of spectators whose
amusement he stopped, Napoleon's work has had its results, in spite of
Waterloo and St. Helena. The martyrdom of the poor monk caused an
abolishment of the brutal sports of the Colosseum, which henceforth
crumbled to pieces. Little did the people look for this result who
trampled the monk under foot. Neither did Blucher, debouching on the
English left with Bulow's battalions on the evening of Waterloo,
foresee, some fifty years later, Prussia extending its hand to make a
united Italy, which with Napoleon--who was by blood, nature, instinct,
and education an Italian--had been the dream and ambition of his life.
Eunuchism as a punishment is an old practice, as the ancient Egyptians
inflicted it at times upon their prisoners of war; so it formed part of
their penal code, and we are told that rape was punished by the loss of
the virile organ; a like punishment for the same offense was in vogue
with the Spaniards and Britons; with the Romans at different times and
with the Poles the punishment was castration. The difficulty of proving
the crime, as well as the ease with which the crime could be charged
through motives of revenge, spite, or cupidity on innocent persons,
should never have allowed this form of punishment to be so generally
used as history relates that it was; rape being one of the most complex
and intricate of medico-legal subjects, unless we take M. Voltaire's
summary and Solomonic judgment, who relates that a queen, who did not
wish to listen to a charge of rape made by one person against another,
took the scabbard of a sword and, while she kept the open end in motion,
asked the accuser to sheath the sword.
Count Raoul Du Bisson, _Dedjaz de l'Abyssinie_, gives some very
interesting information in regard to eunuchism in his work entitled "The
Women, the Eunuchs, and the Warriors of the Soudan." Count Bisson has
looked on the question from its moral, physical, and demographic
stand-points, and, having seen eunuchism in its different aspects, from
his landing at Alexandria and Cairo, down through his different
expeditions into Arabia, the Soudan, and Abyssinia, his observations are
well worth repeating.
From a demographic and statistical view of the subject, its truly
Malthusian results become at once shockingly and persistently
prominent,--not alone in the interference that the condition induces in
arresting any further procreation on the part of the unfortunate victim,
but in the unparalleled mortality that, in the gross, is made necessary
by the results of the operative procedures. The Soudan alone furnished,
according to reliable statistics, some 3800 eunuchs annually, the
material coming from Abyssinia and the neighboring countries, it being
gathered by war and kidnapping parties, or by purchase, from among the
young male population of those regions. These children are brought to
the Soudan frontier and custom duties are there paid for their passage
across the border, the duty being about two dollars per head. At
Karthoum they are purchased by pharmacists, apothecaries, and others
engaged in the manufacture of eunuchs, who generally perform simple
castration; the mortality among these amounts to about 33 per cent.
These simply castrated eunuchs bring about $200 apiece. The great eunuch
factory of the country, however, is to be found on Mount Ghebel-Eter, at
Abou-Gerghe; here a large Coptic monastery exists, where the unfortunate
little African children are gathered. The building is a large, square
structure, resembling an ancient fortress; on the ground-floor the
operating-room is situated, with all the appliances required to perform
these horrible operations. The Coptic monks do a thriving business, and
furnish Constantinople, Arabia, and Asia Minor with many of their
complete, much-sought-for, and expensive eunuchs. They here manufacture
both grades,--those who are simply castrated and those on whom complete
ablation of all organs has been performed, the latter bringing from $750
to $1000 per head, as only the most robust are taken for this operation,
which nevertheless, even at the monastery, has a mortality of 90 per
cent.
The manner of performing the operation is as barbarous and revolting as
the nature of the operation itself, and the cruel and ignorant
after-treatment is as fully in keeping with the whole. The little,
helpless, and unfortunate prisoner or slave is stretched out on an
operating-table; his neck is made fast in a collar fastened to the
table, and his legs spread apart and the ankles made fast to iron rings;
his arms are each held by an assistant. The operator then seizes the
little penis and scrotum and with one sweep of a sharp razor removes all
the appendages. The resulting wound necessarily bares the pubic bones
and leaves a large, gaping sore that does not heal kindly. A short
bamboo cannula or catheter is then introduced into the urethra, from
which it is allowed to project for about two inches, and no attention
is paid to any arterial haemorrhage; the whole wound is simply plastered
up with some haemostatic compound and the little victim is then buried in
the warm sand up to his neck, being exposed to the hot, scorching rays
of the sun; the sand and soil is tightly packed about his little body so
as to prevent any possibility of any movement on the part of the child,
perfect immobility being considered by the monks as the main element
required to promote a successful result. _It is estimated that 35,000
little Africans are annually sacrificed to produce the Soudanese average
quota of its 3800 eunuchs._
When this immense sacrifice of life, the useless barbarity, and the
really unnecessary needs of such mutilated humanity existing are fully
considered, it would seem as if Christian nations might, with some
reason, interfere in this horrible traffic, by the side of which
ordinary slavery seems but a trifle. When we further consider that, in
some instances, the child is also made mute by the excision of part of
the tongue,--as mute or dumb eunuchs are less apt to enter into
intrigues, and are therefore higher prized,--the barbarity, cruelty, and
extremes of inhumanity that these poor children have to suffer cannot be
overestimated. Neither must we be astonished at the stolid indifference
that is exhibited by the eunuchs in after life to any or all sentiments
of humanity, or that they should hold the rest of humanity in continual
execration.
Often-occurring accidents in harems make _complete_ eunuchs a
desideratum. Bisson mentions that on one occasion he saw the chief
eunuch of the Grand Cherif of Mecca--a large, finely-proportioned,
powerful black--on his way to Stamboul for trial and sentence; he was
heavily chained and well guarded. It appears that the eunuch had only
been partly castrated, and that the operation had been performed during
infancy; his testicles had not fully descended, so that in the operation
the sac was simply obliterated, which gave him the appearance of a
eunuch. In this condition he seemed to have kept a perfect control of
himself and passions until made chief eunuch of the Cherif, who
possessed a well-assorted harem of choice Circassian, Georgian, and
European beauties. The _neglige_ toilet of the harem bath and the
seductive influence of this terrestrial Koranic seventh heaven was too
much for the warm Soudanese blood of the chief; his forays were not
suspected until a blonde Circassian houri presented her lord and master,
the Cherif, with a suspiciously mulatto-looking son and heir. A
consultation of the Koran failed to explain this discrepancy, and
suspicion pointed to the chief eunuch, who was accordingly watched; it
was found that he had not only corrupted the fair Circassian, but every
inmate of the harem as well. The harem was promptly sacked and drowned
and the false eunuch shipped to the Sultan for sentence, the Cherif
having the right to sentence and drown the harem, but having no such
rights over such a high personage as the chief eunuch.
There are physiological facts and pathological conditions brought forth
for our contemplation, while investigating the subject of eunuchism in
all its details, that cause us to feel that, after all, the old
Hippocratic principle of inductive philosophy, upon which our study and
practice of medicine is founded, with rational experience and
observation for its corner-stone, is, even if commonplace, the only
proper avenue of knowledge. To exemplify this proposition we have in
this particular subject the practical observations and experience of M.
Mondat, of Montpellier; in his interesting work on "De la Sterilite de
l'Homme et de la Femme," published in 1840, he details some instructive
information on the subject of eunuchs, giving some explanation as to why
many simply castrated eunuchs are, like the much-prized eunuchs of the
Roman matrons, still able to acquit themselves of the copulative
function. He mentions that while in Turkey he studied the subject in its
details, and, having found some of these copulating eunuchs, he secured
some of the ejaculated fluid and subjected it to a careful examination.
The discharge was lacking the characteristic seminal odor; it was in
other respects, to the palpation especially, very much like the seminal
fluid. He found that these eunuchs were much given to venereal
enjoyment, but that either legitimate intercourse or masturbation, to
which many were addicted, was apt to be followed by a marasmus ending in
galloping consumption. Mondat personally knew the opera-singer Velutti,
who died in London; Velutti was, when a child, castrated by his parents,
having both testicles removed, being intended by his father, who had
himself performed the operation, for the choir of the Papal Chapel at
Rome. Velutti was as much of a favorite in his day as our present tenors
and handsome actors. The admiration of the opposite sex was fatal to
him; he formed a _liaison_ with a young English lady residing in London,
and the resulting excesses in which he indulged quickly brought him to
his grave. He was passionately fond of women and was able to acquit
himself perfectly; at least, as far as the copulative act--barring
fecundation--was concerned.
In a previous part of this chapter I have alluded to the very
appropriate arrangement which formerly existed when music-teachers were
eunuchs, and that our higher circles of society would do well to employ
eunuchized coachmen, especially if possessed of susceptible and elopable
daughters; but, from the accounts given by Mondat, it would seem that
they are not as safe as might at first be imagined. However, they could
not be as dangerous as the chief eunuch of the Grand Cherif of Mecca and
increase the population to the same extent; but I should judge that they
might be a very demoralizing moral element if introduced into modern
society. If eunuchs must be employed, it can easily be understood why
the Turk and Chinese prefer the real, clean-cut article. The New York
"Four Hundred" should make a note of this, as in their present thirst
for European aristocratic notions, coats of arms and titles, there is no
telling how soon they may cross over into Oriental customs and run a
harem, in which case it would be sad to have them make any mistakes in
the quality and ability of the eunuch.
Dr. Gardner W. Allen has furnished the American profession with a
faithful translation of the valuable work of Professor Ultzmann on
"Sterility and Impotence." In this, we have a clear and intelligent
dissertation that explains the above conditions, and I am only surprised
that the observations of Mondat have not developed such explanations
before, as the principle was fully explained in practice fifty years ago
by the Montpellier physician. According to Ultzmann, there is a form of
fecundating impotence in persons otherwise well provided with an
apparent complete apparatus, an impotence which he terms _potentia
generandi_. He states, however, that this form of impotence was not
recognized until a few years ago, citing the fact that females have had,
as a rule, to bear all of the blame for the unfruitfulness of the
family, and that they have been accordingly subjected to all manner of
operations, general and local treatment, even to being sent to watering
places and sanatoria where red-headed male attendants are employed, to
say nothing of the prayers, intercessions, pilgrimages, and novenas to
the holy shrines, as mentioned in the chapter on the holy prepuce.
Ultzmann observes that a man may be perfectly able to go through the
procreative or, rather, the copulative act, even to the great
satisfaction of all parties concerned, and yet be perfectly impotent; he
even goes further, by observing that there are cases in which copulation
may take place without any fluid whatever being ejaculated. He mentions
two such cases at pages 87 and 116 of his book. In the first instance
the ejaculated fluid is precisely as that observed in such cases as
those of the eunuchs and of Velutti, mentioned by Mondat, and consisted
of an azooespermic discharge, made up mainly from the secretion of the
seminal vesicles, the accessory glands of the urethra, the prostate, and
Cowper's glands, as well as the discharge from the secretory glands
distributed along the course of the urethral mucous membrane. Some of
the cases of this form of impotence have exhibited wonderful copulating
desire and power of endurance, and, even if unfecundating, they must be
said to be better off than the victims of that other form of male
impotence, the _potentia coeundi_ of Ultzmann, where, with a normal
semen, either the power of erection or that of ejaculation may be
entirely absent.