n 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-Wang,
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 assimilating to that of the other sex,
this being on the same principle that the _basso-profundos_ were
infibulated that they might retain their bass.

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 sexual 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