Page:A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-pollution, and other excesses.djvu/20

 Rh compare him with other men and see in what he is deficient: for his physical moral and intellectual relations will of course be deficient in all that depends on the genital organs. This study will reveal to you their power, and will point out to you the difference between a man in whose development they have assisted, and one in whose development, the genital organs have taken no part.

Eunuchs are very seldom tall: they are frequently short and sometimes very short. A woman fifty-two years old, who had no uterus, and whose genitals were presented to the academy of medicine by M. Renaulden, was only three and a half feet high. The limbs of eunuchs when they are not percolated with white fluids, are generally thin and badly developed. Their bones have neither their usual size nor form, as has been remarked by many observers, particularly by M. Mojon of Geneva. (Alibert, Nouv. El. de. therapeutique, 3d edition, vol. ii., p. 115.) This defect in growth is much more remarkable in the larynx. This organ which generally acquires two-thirds of its size at puberty, remains as in infancy, and the voice preserves that shrillness which it has in young people, but becomes a little stronger because the chest enlarges. The different tissues are not only less developed, but some are not developed at all. Thus in eunuchs the beard and the hairs on the pubis are deficient; their skin remains as free from hairs as in early youth. The genital organs then have a powerful effect on nutrition, because when they are deficient, the growth is defective or ceases entirely. This influence is manifested also by the characters presented by the different tissues after the action of the genital parts ceases. To understand these characters, we have only to compare the flesh of animals who have been castrated with that of those who are perfect; for example the flesh of the ox with that of the bull, that of the capon with that of the rooster &c. In the eunuch these characters are no less marked. His organization is in a measure stationary. When an adult, he preserves in great part the physical attributes