Sterilization not a preventive

Title: Sterilization not a preventive
Creator: Collin, Remy
Language: English
Year: 1939
Subject: Castration.; Sterilization (Birth control)
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Fulltext: dferi/1zaliori nol a §tevenlive CASTRATION performed before puberty prevents the appearance of the combative and the sexual instincts. Eunuchs are pathetic, cowardly and childish. But removal of the male glands after puberty does not involve psychical consequences of so much importance, and we know that the reproductive appetite and its impulses are often retained. Therefore judicial sterilization for indecent assault, as practiced in Missouri, is an absolutely vain measure: it protects neither the criminal against himself, nor society against the criminal. This experiment also indicates the failure of sterilization for insanity or violations of the law, which takes place on a large scale in Germany, under the fallacious pretext of protecting racial purity. Psychic modifications occurring after sterilization are more serious among women, and are graver if the patient is young and the natural meno~ pause is a. long way off. Asthenia, or debility, lessening of activity, alterations in the character, the emotions, the will and the power of attention are found in most cases. But after a time things usually rearrange themselves and a new endocrine balance is established.-Remy Collin in "Les Hermones." • • •