Page:A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-pollution, and other excesses.djvu/21

 Rh of youth, and then when these are lost, those of old age, and not those of manhood, present themselves. It is the genital organs then which in a perfect man, give colour to the skin, give to the flesh more consistence and firmness and which gradually take up from the cellular tissue those white fluids, which prevent us from seeing the prominences of the bones and muscles. The organization of the eunuch is then unfinished, imperfect. The organs which should have appeared at the period of puberty are not seen: others acquire only a part of their growth: all retain a part of those characters which they ought properly speaking to lose and do not obtain those which belong to them. These facts are highly important. The study of them demonstrates the extent of the derangement caused by venereal excesses: for the organs abused by the onanist and libertine, are those which take so active and special a part in the internal economy of all our tissues: which stamp them with the seal·of virility, of which the eunuch always remains destitute.

Consider the eunuch now in his life of relation: look in him for the thought, activity, and sensibility of the man. In these respects also how much he is deficient; he is inactive, indifferent, and destitute of energy. The lymphatic temperament is marked in him by his insensibility, his apathy, no less than by the delicacy of his flesh, and the whiteness of his skin. He has preserved from infancy the disposition given by feebleness, to be excited by the least cause: hence he is timid and pusillanimous and cowardly. Devoid of any internal feeling which renders the soul gay, he is morose and wearisome. He is destitute of those feelings which attach man to man and render one capable of attachment, love, and devotion. He lives, he vegetates only for himself: he is a perfect egotist: if he has any sentiments they are those of envy or hatred: in fact they are repulsive sentiments: but most frequently he has none or they are very slight. The crimes of the eunuch come in fact less from the sentiments he has, than from those he