8. THE MAN UNSEXED, by Mutilation or Masturbation. Eunuchs are proverbial for their cruelty and crafty and unsympathizing dispositions. Their mental powers are feeble and their physical strength is inferior. They lack courage and physical endurance. When a child is operated upon before the age of puberty, the voice retains its childish treble, the limbs their soft and rounded outlines, and the neck acquires a feminine fulness; no beard makes its appearance. In ancient times and up to this time in Oriental nations eunuchs are found. They are generally slaves who have suffered mutilation at a tender age. It is a scientific fact that where boys have been taught the practice of masturbation in their early years, say from eight to fourteen years of age, if they survive at all they often have their powers reduced to a similar condition of a eunuch. They generally however suffer a greater disadvantage. Their health will be more or less injured. In the eunuch the power of sexual intercourse is not entirely lost but of course there is sterility and little if any satisfaction, and the same thing may be true of the victim of self-abuse. {408} 9. SIGNS OF VIRILITY.--As the young man develops in strength and years the sexual appetite will manifest itself. The secretion of the male known as the seed or semen depends for the life-transmitting power upon little minute bodies called spermatozoa. These are very active and numerous in a healthy secretion, being many hundreds in a single drop and a single one of them is capable to bring about conception in a female. Dr. Napheys in his "Transmission of Life," says: "The secreted fluid has been frozen and kept at a temperature of zero for four days, yet when it was thawed these animalcules, as they are supposed to be, were as active as ever. They are not, however, always present, and when present may be of variable activity. In young men, just past puberty, and in aged men, they are often scarce and languid in motion." At the proper age the secretion is supposed to be the most active, generally at the age of twenty-five, and decreases as age increases. 10. HYGIENIC RULE.--The man at mid-life should guard carefully his passions and the husband his virile powers, and as the years progress, steadily wean himself more from his desire, for his passions will become weaker with age and any excitement in middle life may soon debilitate and destroy his virile powers.