ly 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 analogous 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 ship'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 worship, 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 asserting 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 participating in the priesthood as
being imperfect and unclean, the Church reproached Or