Boies, in his “Prisoners and Paupers,” declares that surgical interference is the only method of dealing with the criminal, and preventing him from reproducing his kind.  He says:—­“These organs have no function in the human organism except the creation and gratification of desire and the reproduction of the species.  Their loss has no effect upon the health, longevity, or abilities of the individual of adult years.  The removal of them therefore by destroying desire would actually diminish the wants of nature and increase the enjoyments of life for paupers.  A want removed is equivalent to a want supplied.  In other words, such removal would be a positive benefit to the abnormal rather than a deprivation, rather a kindness than an injury.  This operation bestowed upon the abnormal inmates of our prisons, reformatories, jails, asylums, and public institutions, would entirely eradicate those unspeakable evil practices which are so terribly prevalent, debasing, destructive, and uncontrolled in them.  It would confer upon the inmates health and strength, for weakness and impotence, satisfaction and comfort for discontent and insatiable desire.”

Anaesthetics have ensured that these operations may be performed without the slightest suspicion of pain, and with careful sympathetic surgery, pain may be absent throughout the whole of convalescence.  Antiseptics have made it possible to perform these operations with practically no risk to life.

Though castration and Oophorectomy can be performed with safety and without pain, they are absolutely unjustifiable operations, if done to produce sterility.

Every incision and every stitch in surgery, beyond the necessities of the case, are objectionable, and to remove an organ, when the section of its duct is sufficient is to say the least of it, bad surgery.

Vasectomy is the resection of a portion of the duct of the testicles, followed by ligature of the ends.  No doubt ligature alone would be sufficient for the purpose, but up to the present, a piece of the duct has been removed, when this operation has been found necessary in the treatment of disease.

This duct is the secretory tube of the testicle, so that when it is occluded, the secretion is dammed back, and degeneration and atrophy of the organ are induced.  It soon wastes, and becomes as functionless as though it were removed.

This operation can be performed in a Surgery with the aid of a little Cocaine, and the patient may walk to his home, sterilized for the rest of his natural life, after the complete loss of any accumulated fluid.

Of these two operations for the sterilization of men, vasectomy is preferable.  The major operation for the purpose of inducing artificial sterility should never for a moment be considered.

But vasectomy, though surgically simple, and a less violation of sentiment than castration, cannot be justified except in exceptional cases.