Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

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The marvelous influence of the sexual glands on the mind and character is at once apparent if we consider the aberration from the normal of the castrated person. The authorities who have studied the eunuchs in Egypt and the Skopze in Russia (a religious sect who adopt castration as a tenet), found typical characteristics in these people that distinguished them from the normal.

Thus, as a rule (and as stated by Moebius), the biography of remarkable eunuchs of the old and middle ages shows that they are entirely deficient in courage, which seems to be dependent entirely on the possession of testicles, and the same fact may be noted also in the case of the lower animals. Thus, an ox is a coward compared to a bull, and an ordinary horseman prefers to ride a mare rather than a stallion. The best means of taming certain animals is by depriving them of their testicles at an early age. Intelligence also is much influenced, not only by the thyroid, as already shown, but by the testicles. Thus persons of literary or other fame, such as artists and the like, have become impaired in their capacity after castration: Abelard, for example.