d, mentions that, according to Pelikan (_Das
Skopzentum in Ruessland_), those castrated at puberty are fit for coitus
long afterward. When castration is performed for surgical reasons at a
later age it is still less likely to affect potency or to change the
sexual feelings.[13] Guinard concludes that the sexual impulse after
castration is relatively more persistent in man than in the lower animals,
and is sometimes even heightened, being probably more dependent on
external stimuli.[14]

Except in the East, castration is more often performed on women than on
men, and then the evidence as to the influence of the removal of the
ovaries on the sexual emotions shows varying results. It has been found
that after castration sexual desire and sexual pleasure in coitus may
either remain the same, be diminished or extinguished, or be increased. By
some the diminution has been attributed to autosuggestion, the woman being
convinced that she can no longer be like other women; the augmentation of
desire and pleasure has been supposed to be due to the removal of the
dread of impregnation. We have, of course, to take into account individual
peculiarities, method of life, and the state of the health.

In France Jayle ("Effets physiologiques de la Castration chez la
Femme," _Revue de Gynecologie_, 1897, pp. 403-57) found that,
among 33 patients in whom ovariotomy had been performed, in 18
sexual desire remained the same, in 3 it was diminished, in 8
abolished, in 3 increased; while pleasure in coitus remained the
same in 17, was diminished in 1, abolished in 4, and increased in
5, in 6 cases sexual intercourse was very painful. In two other
groups of cases--one in which both ovaries and uterus were
removed and another in which the uterus alone was removed--the
results were not notably different.

In Germany Glaeveke (_Archiv fuer Gynaekologie_, Bd. xxxv, 1889)
found that desire remained in 6 cases, was diminished in 10, and
disappeared in 11, while pleasure in intercourse remained in 8,
was diminished in 10, and was lost in 8. Pfister, again (_Archiv
fuer Gynaekologie_, Bd. lvi, 1898), examined this point in 99
castrated women; he remarks that sexual desire and sexual
pleasure in intercourse were usually associated, and found the
former unchanged in 19 cases, decreased in 24, lost in 35, never
present in 21, while the latter was unchanged in 18 cases and