ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 121 
covetous monks. The price of the survivors, thus enhanced, 
is from 1500 to 3000 piastres. 
In Europe the practice of castrating of men has been also 
maintained, more or less, in some countries. Thus, in Spain 
and Holland adultery was punished by castration. In Ger¬ 
many and France it was formerly had recourse to, to cure 
certain diseases; as, for instance, leprosy, gout, elephantiasis, 
insanity, and hernia. In the latter affection it was con¬ 
sidered indispensable ; but at last the disastrous results of 
a species of quacks, who, under pretext of preventing scrotal 
hernia, deprived a number of children of their organs of 
generation, led to the Royal Society of Medicine being con¬ 
sulted on it in 1776, and they obtained a law forbidding the 
operation of castration being resorted to as a cure for hernia. 
Finally, this criminal practice has been perpetrated in a 
Christian country—in Italy, and particularly in Rome, where 
one would naturally have thought that the influence of reli¬ 
gious sentiments would long since have extinguished it. Its 
object is to conserve the soprano voice of the singers, who 
perform indiscriminately in the churches and the theatres. 
ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
QUARTERLY MEETING OE COUNCIL, held January 16, 1861. 
Present :—The President, Messrs. Braby, Ernes, Dickens, 
Ellis, Hunt, Harpley, Jex, Lawson, Moon, Robinson, 
Stanley, Silvester, Wallis, Withers, Professors Spooner 
and Simonds, and the Secretary. 
J. Wilkinson, Esq., the President, in the Chair. 
The minutes of the preceeding meeting were read and 
signed. 
A letter was read from Mr. Lambert, requesting the return 
of his examination fee, as he had not appeared before the 
Board; when it was decided that the examination fee be not 
returned, but that Mr. Lambert may be at liberty to present 
himself for examination before any future meeting of the 
Board, on the usual notice being given. 
Communications were read from the Foreign Office, ac¬ 
companied by a number of documents sent from the 
Saxon Government to the English Government, for the use 
of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons; when, on the 
