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

80 страница из 141

Moebius, in the history of the world, could find no castrates of great intelligence. Knowledge gained by diligent labor is not referred to here. We merely wish to express our conviction that great ideas, such as are found in men of genius, are impossible in men devoid of their testicles; and it appears out of the question to imagine such men as Napoleon, Goethe, or others, as castrates. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that such great men had a private life that would have rendered them unfit for the position of superintendent of an American Sunday School.

Courage is a specific feature that can only be found in a man who is still in possession of healthy sexual glands; it is entirely wanting in eunuchs. Cowardice, superstition, laziness, avarice, vanity, cruelty, and other bad qualities are typical features in eunuchs. Our friend Sir Hugh Adcock, formerly physician to the late Shah of Persia, told us that his own experience with hundreds of eunuchs showed him that they all had these bad qualities. Capacity for hard work, generosity, kind-heartedness, and religion may be found in persons who are in the possession of healthy, vigorous, sexual glands; but by exhaustion, after sexual excesses, a condition may be created analogous to myxœdema after previous Graves’s disease. This exhaustion of the sexual glands may create a condition in which some of the features of the castrated may appear. This is noticeable in the character of many of the dignitaries of oriental countries who possess large harems, and also in occidental countries in many men who lead a life of debauchery. The influence of the pituitary is shown by changes that invariably occur in the nervous system and mind after any alteration in it. Thus, in two millionaires suffering from acromegaly we have observed great stinginess. We do not intimate that this is a characteristic of millionaires, but these gentlemen were quite the reverse before becoming afflicted with their disease. In one case of acromegaly, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to Dr. Dercum of Philadelphia, there was a great distrust of anything new, even the most useful of innovations. This caused great discontent among the gentleman’s business partners, although he himself showed this disposition only after the symptoms of his disease were apparent. In acromegaly there exists a hyperactivity of the pituitary; Renon was able to produce the disease by giving large doses of pituitary extracts, and Hochenegg obtained good results in his treatment of it by extirpating the pituitary body.