t sthenic patients, when bled, died: the superstition and
medical usage of the age prescribed bleeding, and when the fat abbots
came to be bled, he bled them freely and with satisfaction. Justinian
decreed that anyone guilty of performing the operation which deprived an
individual of virility should be subjected to a similar operation, and
this crime was later punished with death. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries we encounter another and even viler reason for this
practice: that "the voice of such a person" (one castrated in boyhood)
"after arriving at adult age, combines the high range and sweetness of
the female with the power of the male voice," had long been known, and
Italian singing masters were not slow in putting this hint to practical
use. The poor sometimes sold their children for this purpose, and the
castrati and soprani are terms well known to the musical historian.

These artificial voices disgraced the Italian stage until literally
driven from it by public hostility, and the punishment of death was the
reward of the individual bold enough to perform such an operation. The
papal authority excommunicated those guilty of the crime and those upon
whom such an operation had been performed, but received artificial
voices, which were the result of accident, into the Sistine choir.
This pretext served the church well and, until the year 1878, when
the disgrace was wiped out by Pope Leo XIII, the Sistine choir was an
eloquent commentary upon the attitude of an institution placed, as it
were, "between love and duty." It should be recorded that this choir, in
its recent visit to the United States, had but one artificial voice, and
its owner was the oldest member of the choir.

Young home-born slaves were bought up by the dealers, castrated, because
of the increased price they brought when in this condition, and sold for
huge sums: Seneca, Controv. x, chap. 4; and kidnapping was frequently
resorted to, just as it is in Africa today.

In Russia there is a sect called the "skoptzi," whose tenets, in this
respect, are indicated by their name. This sect is first mentioned in
the person of a certain Adrian, a monk, who came to Russia about the
year 1001. In 1041, l090 to 1096, 1138 to 1147, 1326, they are noticed,
and in 1721 to 1724 they are prominent. They call themselves "white
doves" and are divided into smaller congregations which, in their
allegorical terminology, they call "ships"; the leader of