PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EUNUCHISM AND MEDICINE.
Eunuchism does not always subdue the animal passions; this is the view that the church took in connection with the emasculation of Origenes and his monks; the church here held that not only was it possible for them to still sin in heart or imagination, but that, even were the complete eradication of the sexual idea possible, they had by their act lost the main glory of a Christian,--that of successfully striving against temptation, and by a force born of triumphant virtue overcome all the wiles of the devil. It is related that among the eunuchs at Rome there were some who, having been made so late in life, still retained the power of copulation, although the final act of the performance was absent. Montfalcon relates that Cabral reported dissecting a soldier who was hanged for committing a rape, but who on dissection showed not the least trace of testicles, either in the scrotum or abdomen, although the seminal vesicles were filled with some fluid.[34] Sprengle, in his "History of Medicine," relates of the complete removal of both testicles from an old man of seventy years of age, on account of inordinate sexual desire, the operation having no perceptible effect in subduing the disease.[35] These cases are analogous to those exceptionable cases in which, after extirpation of the ovaries, both menstruation and fecundation have still taken place.
Modern civilization and its unnatural mode of dressing inflict great harm on men by keeping these parts too warm and constricted. Much of the irritability of these organs, as well as their _decadence_ at an age some generation or two before the time when they should still possess all their virile attributes, can be directly attributed to this cause. A more intelligent way of dressing would result in less moral and physical wreckage, and require less galvanic belts and aphrodisiacs in men under fifty. If those who habitually swath their scrotums in the heavy folds of their flannel shirts, to which are superadded the cotton shirts, drawers, and outer clothes in which civilized man incases himself, would cast a backward eye into the dim and misty past, and see the priest of some of the old Pagan gods soaking the scrotum in hot water, and then gradually rubbing the testicles within, by gentle but firm friction, _to make the testicles disappear_, a process by which many of the heathen priests prepared themselves for the discharge of their sacerdotal duties and the strict observance of those rules of chastity and celibacy which they were henceforth to live up to, they would find _one_ explanation of why civilized man does not possess that vigor and retain that procreative power into advanced age that was one of the characteristics of our ancient progenitors in the days that breeches were as abbreviated as those now worn by the Sioux Indians. These are really but leggins, which run only to the perineum and are simply tied by outer points to a strap from each hip. Finely and comfortably cushioned chairs may be a luxury to sit on, but they will have, on the man who uses them in youth and in his prime, a wonderful sedative and moral influence later on, about as effectual as the miniature warm baths for the scrotum and gentle pressure to the testicles that were used by the heathen priests of old, who preferred a gradual disappearance of the glands to the too sudden and summary methods of the Cybelian clergy, who used a piece of shell and an elaborately-performed castration. According to Paulus Ægineta, this was a common practice of making eunuchs out of young boys in the Orient, the mortality being hardly any; whereas the _taillè à fleur de ventre_, the favorite method for making eunuchs for harem guards and attendants, and more suited to the jealous disposition of the Turk, has a mortality of three out of every four, according to Chardin, and of two out of every three, according to Clot Bey, the chief physician of the Pasha,[36] and of nine out of ten, according to Bisson. So prone to reach high offices were intelligent eunuchs that it is related that parents were at times induced to treat their boys in the manner above stated, that they might be on the highway to royal favor, honor, and rank; such is the ennobling tendency of Oriental despotism, polygamy, and harem life. On the same principle Europeans subjected their boys to a like operation to fit them for a chorister life or the stage, where fame and honor and wealth were to be found.