History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Part 3

The French Guards at Fontenoy, who out of courtesy refused to fire first on the English, may have been very ethical and chivalrous, but they were very foolish, as the English discharge nearly swept them from the field, and but for the Irish Brigade, who knew no ethics, Louis XV would in all likelihood have followed the example of King John, who, after Crecy, visited England for a season. A disregard of ethics gave Copenhagen to Lord Nelson, who insisted on looking at Admiral Parker's signal to withdraw from action with his sightless eye, which could not see it. A fear of disregarding ethics lost to Grouchy the chance of a.s.sisting Napoleon at Waterloo. In our strife against ignorance and quackery the profession should follow the general plan of action usually adopted by Lord Nelson--lie alongside of whom you can and sink or capture your enemy; let each man do his duty; never mind any general plan. A reverse to this mode of fighting invariably lost the battle to the French and Spaniards, who were, as a rule, all tied up in ethical red tape. Our profession is broad, intelligent, and fearless; we do not profess any exclusive dogma, and should not, therefore, exclude persons; as a large s.h.i.+p throws its grappling-irons on to its adversary, we should always seek an opportunity to meet these gentry when practicable. As it is, we have placed them on the vantage-ground of appearing as being persecuted; our ethics need circ.u.mcising in this regard, and the prepuce of exclusion should be buried in the sands of the desert.

Moreover, we often are apt to learn something from even the most ignorant of these men. Rush investigated the nature of a cancer-cure by not refusing to meet and talk with one of this kind;[28] Fothergill learned from an old, unlicensed pract.i.tioner that there was a knowledge important to the physician beyond that picked up in the pathological laboratory or the study of microscopy; and that the practiced eye of an otherwise unlearned man could detect that there were general physical signs that negatived the unfavorable prognosis suggested by the presence of tube-casts.[29] It is related of Sir Isaac Newton, that while riding homeward one day, the weather being clear and cloudless, in pa.s.sing a herder he was warned to ride fast or the shower would wet him. Sir Isaac looked upon the man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. "My cow,"

answered the man, "always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Wors.h.i.+p, and she so twisted it just before I saw you."[30]

Although twisting cow-tails do not figure in his "Principia," it is very probable that such a lesson was not without its remote effects on a mind like Newton's. A spider taught a lesson to one of Scotland's kings; so that one man may learn something from another.

Professor Letenneur, of the Medical School of Nantes, in his "Causerie a propos de la Circoncision," mentions that the Convent of Saint Corneille, in Compiegne, claims to possess the identical instrument with which the Holy Circ.u.mcision was performed. Such a holy relic must have been unusually potential in performing many miracles.

In this connection it will not be amiss to notice the lapping over that the old phallic wors.h.i.+p and idea has made on the new religions. It is also as interesting to observe how the human mind still leans toward observances and ideas which are believed to belong to a solely pagan people. Hargrave Jennings, in a chapter devoted to phallic wors.h.i.+p among the ancient Gauls, gives many interesting and curious examples, the first example that he notices being that of Saint Foutin (from whom the very expressive French word "_foutre_" is taken). Foutin was the first Christian bishop of Lyons, and after his death, so intimately was priapic wors.h.i.+p intermingled with the religion or theology of the Gauls, that somehow the memory of St. Foutin and the old, dethroned Priapus became commingled, and finally the former was unconsciously made to take the place of the latter. St. Foutin was immensely popular. He was believed to have a wonderful influence in restoring fertility to barren women and vigor and virility to impotent men. It is related that, in the church at Varages, in Provence, to such a degree of reputation had the shrine of this saint risen, it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine. On windy days the beadle and s.e.xton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions are said to have been sadly interfered with. At a church in Embrun there was a large phallus, which was said to be a relic of St. Foutin. The wors.h.i.+ppers were in the habit of offering wine to this deity,--after the manner of the early Pagans,--the wine being poured over the head of the organ and caught underneath in a sacred vessel. This was then called "holy vinegar," and was believed to be an efficacious remedy in cases of sterility, impotence, or want of virility.

Near the city of Bourges, at Bourg Dieu, there existed, during the Roman occupation of Gaul, an old priapic statue, which was wors.h.i.+pped by the surrounding country. The veneration in which it was held and the miracles with which it was accredited made it impolitic as well as impossible for the early missionaries and monks to remove it; it would have created too much opposition. It was therefore allowed to remain, but gradually changed into a saint,--St. Guerluchon,--which, however, did not detract any from its former merit or reputation. Sterile women flocked to the shrine, and pilgrimages and a set number of days of devotion to this saint were in order. Sc.r.a.pings from this statue infused in water were said to make a miraculous drink which insured conception.

Similar shrines to this same saint were erected at other places, and we are told that the good monks, who must have had an intense and lively interest in seeing that the population was increased, were kept busy supplying the statues with new members, as the women sc.r.a.ped away so industriously, either to prepare a drink for themselves or for their husbands, that a phallus did not last long. At one of these shrines, so onerous became the industry of replacing a new phallus to the saint, that the good monks placed an ap.r.o.n over the organ, informing the good women that thereafter a simple contemplation of the sacred organ would be sufficient; and a special monk was detailed to take special charge of this ap.r.o.n, which was only to be lifted in special cases of sterility.

By this innovation the good monks stole a march on their brothers in like shrines in other localities, such as those of St. Gilles, in Brittany, or St. Rene, in Anjou, where the old-fas.h.i.+oned sc.r.a.ping and replacing still was in vogue. Near the seaport town of Brest, in Brittany, at the shrine of St. Guignole, the monks adopted a new expedient. They bored a hole through the statue, through which a phallus was made to project horizontally; as fast as the devotees sc.r.a.ped away in front the good monks as industriously pushed forward the wooden peg that formed the phallus, so that it gave the member the miraculous appearance of growing out as fast as sc.r.a.ped off, which greatly added to its reputation and efficacy. The shrine continued in great vigor until the middle of the last century. Delaure mentions a similar shrine at Puy, also in France, which existed up to the outbreak of the French Revolution. The sc.r.a.pings in this case were immersed in wine, and the guardians of the statue saw to it that no amount of paring or sc.r.a.ping should remove from the saint any of that appearance of vigor or virility which his great reputation demanded, this being done by a similar procedure as followed at the church near Brest, one of the attendants having been sent to investigate into the marvelous growth of the Brest phallus.

CHAPTER VIII.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.e.xual 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 circ.u.mlocution, 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 G.o.ds. 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, Gaa, that she incited her next-born children, the t.i.tans, 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 p.e.n.i.s, or the s.c.r.o.t.u.m 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 G.o.d 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 cas.h.i.+ers,--a circ.u.mstance 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 cla.s.s would make showing in itself the benefits that would follow such an innovation, as it would show that the cla.s.s 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 a.s.sume that the bank that could advertise, in connection with its attractive quarterly or semi-annual statement, that the president and cas.h.i.+er 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, a.s.sisted 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 cla.s.s.

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 lat.i.tudes,--a fact that probably a.s.sisted 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es with its teeth, the habit being instigated by a jealousy, for fear of future compet.i.tion 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 wis.h.i.+ng to build, and the Latin _kasturio_ having the same relative but a more imperative signification; _kastor_, signifying as loving to build; _cast.i.tiator_, 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 sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf and from India. It was called, also, by the Arabs, _chuzyalu-l-bahhr_, or t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 circ.u.mcision 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 circ.u.mcision.[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 compa.s.s 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 a.n.a.logous 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 s.h.i.+p'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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.serting 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 partic.i.p.ating 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 p.e.n.i.s alone, or the s.c.r.o.t.u.m and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, or removing only the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, 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 p.e.n.i.s, s.c.r.o.t.u.m, nor anything, who owned a large and select harem. Montesquieu, in his "Persian Letters," admits this cla.s.s 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-w.a.n.g, 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 a.s.similating to that of the other s.e.x, this being on the same principle that the _ba.s.so-profundos_ were infibulated that they might retain their ba.s.s.

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 s.e.xual 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 p.e.n.i.s 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 a.s.sistant immediately applies to the wound a handful of styptic powder, composed of odoriferous raisins, alum, and dried puffball powder (boletus-powder). The a.s.sistant 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 ba.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 cla.s.s, some of whom acc.u.mulated 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 cla.s.s--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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ent.i.tled "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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sistant. The operator then seizes the little p.e.n.i.s and s.c.r.o.t.u.m 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 pa.s.sions until made chief eunuch of the Cherif, who possessed a well-a.s.sorted harem of choice Circa.s.sian, 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 Circa.s.sian 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 Circa.s.sian, but every inmate of the harem as well. The harem was promptly sacked and drowned and the false eunuch s.h.i.+pped 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sionately 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 t.i.tles, 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. He mentions two such cases at pages 87 and 116 of his book. In the first instance the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fluid is precisely as that observed in such cases as those of the eunuchs and of Velutti, mentioned by Mondat, and consisted of an azoospermic 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 s.e.m.e.n, either the power of erection or that of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n may be entirely absent.

CHAPTER IX.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EUNUCHISM AND MEDICINE.

Eunuchism does not always subdue the animal pa.s.sions; 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 s.e.xual 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, either in the s.c.r.o.t.u.m 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es from an old man of seventy years of age, on account of inordinate s.e.xual desire, the operation having no perceptible effect in subduing the disease.[35] These cases are a.n.a.logous 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 s.c.r.o.t.u.ms in the heavy folds of their flannel s.h.i.+rts, to which are superadded the cotton s.h.i.+rts, 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 G.o.ds soaking the s.c.r.o.t.u.m in hot water, and then gradually rubbing the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es within, by gentle but firm friction, _to make the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 chast.i.ty 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 cus.h.i.+oned 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 s.c.r.o.t.u.m and gentle pressure to the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 sh.e.l.l and an elaborately-performed castration. According to Paulus aegineta, this was a common practice of making eunuchs out of young boys in the Orient, the mortality being hardly any; whereas the _taille a 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 p.r.o.ne 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 enn.o.bling 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.