Chapter 11. 

 The Results of Castration. 



It is not our purpose in this book to give a full description of 

 the results of castration. We shall describe these only in so 

 far as is necessary for the purpose of discussing and answering 

 the questions formulated above. So far as possible we shall 

 base our position on investigations made in recent years, since 

 the older observations were often ' made at random, and from 

 an unsatisfactory standpoint. We shall include also our own 

 observations in setting out the evidence. 



A. THE RESULTS OF CASTRATION IN MAN.i 



It is probable that the castration of bulls was universally 

 practised wherever agriculture was sufficiently developed as to 

 be based on the employment of animal labour. And it is at the 

 same time very probable that the castration of animals was 

 preceded by the castration of man himself. In any case there 

 can be scarcely any doubt that castration of man was done in 

 very ancient times. But what we know about the results of 

 castration in man comes almost exclusively from observations 

 collected in the last few decades. The older observations 

 were made mostly on men who were castrated on account of 

 religious beliefs. On the other hand castration has been per- 

 formed frequently in recent times for therapeutic reasons ; 

 for instance, in cases of tuberculosis of the testes, and for 

 osteomalacia and different affections of the abdominal organs 

 in women. Sometimes cases have been observed where the 

 testes were lost by an accident, as during the late war, or 

 owing to criminal injury. Finally, the senile atrophy of the 

 sexual gland in both sexes may be considered as a sort of 

 physiological castration. On the other hand, the various 

 cases in which the testicles or ovaries are described as being 



^ For references see Biedl (1913), pp. 258-279; Hofstdtter, pp. 246-267 ; 

 Kammerev (1912), pp. 62-91; Tandler and Gross (1913); Hirschfeld (1917), 

 Chapter I.; Koch (192 1). 



