Among the Phoenicians there was a similar sect, devoted to the worship of Astarte.  Known as the Galli, they were men who had transformed themselves into the closest possible resemblance to women.  At all times they were prepared to engage with members of either sex in sexual relations of the most depraved kind.  They lived in idleness as prostitutes, cultivating and extending their skill in sex perversions as specialists.  Their initiation into their professional careers was a part of a religious ritual.  During the revels of great festivals, apprentices to the trade, wrought up by certain traditional songs and music, would be hypnotised into a frenzy, run amuck, throw off every garment, and, snatching up swords, deliberately placed in convenient spots, castrate themselves at one blow.  In a wilder hysteria, screaming loudly, the self-made eunuchs would then run through the streets holding the severed organs high above their heads.  At last, faint through loss of blood, they brought their madness to its climax by hurling the organs in their hands into the nearest houses, so forcing the owners to take them in, and provide them with female wearing apparel, and the other feminine accoutrements of war.  Henceforth, this manner of dress was not to be changed.  The physical changes followed.  The hair of the face was lost, the breasts enlarged, the voice became high-pitched, and the other type-characters of the eunuchoid complex appeared.

These constitutions thus may be either congenital or acquired.  Individuals apparently normal during childhood and adolescence may be transformed.  Injuries to the reproductive glands, sometimes the slightest bruises, may lead to atrophy, and a change of personality follows in less than six weeks.  Mumps may achieve the same results because of the inflammation of the gonads that may accompany or follow it.

Whole family and races may show some of the signs of the eunuchoid constitution for generations.  According to Darwin (Descent of Man) “the development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes, and families of the same race.  On the European-Asiatic continent, beards prevail, until we pass beyond India, although with the natives of Ceylon they are often absent....  Eastward of India beards disappear, as with the Siamese, Kalmuks, Malays, Chinese, and Japanese.  Throughout the great American continent the men may be said to be beardless:  but in almost all tribes a few short hairs are apt to appear on the face, especially in old age....”  Hair being an adrenal cortex trait, it is to be inferred that hairless families and races are more eunuchoid, and possess less of the adrenal cortex secretion than the more hairy.

Whatever the exceptions—­and there have been eunuch generals in history—­Marces, Chancellor of Justinian, who beat the Goths at Nocera, and Ali the Gallant who commanded the Turkish Army after the invasion of Hungary in 1856—­the eunuchoid generally runs to type in his mentality and his sexuality.  He is an introvert, his personality is shut in, he isolates himself from the world.