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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
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