the man not in the absence of sexual passion, but only in the fact that he cannot fully gratify it.  As far as he can approach a gratification of it he does so.”  In this connection it may be noted that (as quoted by Moll) Jaeger attributes the preference of some women—­noted in ancient Rome and in the East—­for castrated men as due not only to the freedom from risk of impregnation in such intercourse, but also to the longer duration of erection in the castrated.

When castration is performed without removal of the penis it is said that potency remains for at least ten years afterward, and Disselhorst, who in his Die accessorischen Geschlechtsdruesen der Wirbelthiere takes the same view as has been here adopted, mentions that, according to Pelikan (Das Skopzentum in Ruessland), those castrated at puberty are fit for coitus long afterward.  When castration is performed for surgical reasons at a later age it is still less likely to affect potency or to change the sexual feelings.[13] Guinard concludes that the sexual impulse after castration is relatively more persistent in man than in the lower animals, and is sometimes even heightened, being probably more dependent on external stimuli.[14]

Except in the East, castration is more often performed on women than on men, and then the evidence as to the influence of the removal of the ovaries on the sexual emotions shows varying results.  It has been found that after castration sexual desire and sexual pleasure in coitus may either remain the same, be diminished or extinguished, or be increased.  By some the diminution has been attributed to autosuggestion, the woman being convinced that she can no longer be like other women; the augmentation of desire and pleasure has been supposed to be due to the removal of the dread of impregnation.  We have, of course, to take into account individual peculiarities, method of life, and the state of the health.

In France Jayle ("Effets physiologiques de la Castration chez la Femme,” Revue de Gynecologie, 1897, pp. 403-57) found that, among 33 patients in whom ovariotomy had been performed, in 18 sexual desire remained the same, in 3 it was diminished, in 8 abolished, in 3 increased; while pleasure in coitus remained the same in 17, was diminished in 1, abolished in 4, and increased in 5, in 6 cases sexual intercourse was very painful.  In two other groups of cases—­one in which both ovaries and uterus were removed and another in which the uterus alone was removed—­the results were not notably different.

In Germany Glaeveke (Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, Bd. xxxv, 1889) found that desire remained in 6 cases, was diminished in 10, and disappeared in 11, while pleasure in intercourse remained in 8, was diminished in 10, and was lost in 8.  Pfister, again (Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, Bd. lvi, 1898), examined this point in 99 castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual pleasure