ed out in moments of great excitement, as after a battle. Medicine
has been opposed to any interference with the sexual organs. The oath
taken by the Greek physicians appears to prohibit castration: "I will not
cut."[446] In modern times a great change has taken place, the castration
of both men and women is commonly performed in diseased conditions; the
same operation is sometimes advocated and occasionally performed in the
hope that it may remove strong and abnormal sexual impulses. And during
recent years castration has been invoked in the cause of negative
eugenics, to a greater extent, indeed, on account of its more radical
character, than either the prevention of conception or abortion.

The movement in favor of castration appears to have begun in the United
States, where various experiments have been made in embodying it in law.
It was first advocated merely as a punishment for criminals, and
especially sexual offenders, by Hammond, Everts, Lydston and others. From
this point of view, however, it seems to be unsatisfactory and perhaps
illegitimate. In many cases castration is no punishment at all, and indeed
a positive benefit. In other cases, when inflicted against the subject's
will, it may produce very disturbing mental effects, leading in already
degenerate or unbalanced persons to insanity, criminality, and anti-social
tendencies generally, much more dangerous than the original state.
Eugenic considerations, which were later brought forward, constitute a
much sounder argument for castration; in this case the castration is
carried out, by no means in order to inflict a barbarous and degrading
punishment, but, with the subject's consent, in order to protect the
community from the risk of useless or mischievous members.

The fact that castration can no longer be properly considered a
punishment, is shown by the possibility of deliberately seeking
the operation simply for the sake of convenience, as a preferable
and most effective substitute for the adoption of preventive
methods in sexual intercourse. I am only at present acquainted
with one case in which this course has been adopted. This subject
is a medical man (of Puritan New England ancestry) with whose
sexual history, which is quite normal, I have been acquainted for
a long time past. His present age is thirty-nine. A few years
since, having a sufficiently large family, he adopted preventive
methods of intercour