until he castrated himself he had no peace of
mind.

There is a similar report in an Italian journal which was quoted in
London. It described a student at law, of delicate complexion, who at
the age of fourteen gave himself up to masturbation. He continually
studied until the age of nineteen, when he fell into a state of
dulness, and complained that his head felt as if compressed by a circle
of fire. He said that a voice kept muttering to him that his generative
organs were abnormally deformed or the seat of disease. After that, he
imagined that he heard a cry of "amputation! amputation!" Driven by
this hallucination, he made his first attempt at self-mutilation ten
days later. He was placed in an Asylum at Astino where, though closely
watched, he took advantage of the first opportunity and cut off
two-thirds of his penis, when the delirium subsided. Camp describes a
stout German of thirty-five who, while suffering from delirium tremens,
fancied that his enemies were trying to steal his genitals, and seizing
a sharp knife he amputated his penis close to the pubes. He threw the
severed organ violently at his imaginary pursuers. The hemorrhage was
profuse, but ceased spontaneously by the formation of coagulum over the
mouth of the divided vessels. The wound was quite healed in six weeks,
and he was discharged from the hospital, rational and apparently
content with his surgical feat.

Richards reports the case of a Brahman boy of sixteen who had
contracted syphilis, and convinced, no doubt, that "nocit empta dolore
voluptus," he had taken effective means of avoiding injury in the
future by completely amputating his penis at the root. Some days after
his admission to the hospital he asked to be castrated, stating that he
intended to become an ascetic, and the loss of his testes as well as of
his penis appeared to him to be an imperative condition to the
attainment of that happy consummation. Chevers mentions a somewhat
similar case occurring in India.

Sands speaks of a single man of thirty who amputated his penis. He
gave an incomplete history of syphilis. After connection with a woman
he became a confirmed syphilophobe and greatly depressed. While
laboring under the hallucination that he was possessed of two bodies he
tied a string around the penis and amputated the organ one inch below
the glans. On loosening the string, three hours afterward, to enable
him to urinate, he lost three pints of blood, but he eventuall