Castration
In the 10th century, slave traders in Verdun in France and in Becâne (Pechina), Spain, castrated captives who were then enslaved as harem attendants in Al-Andalus.
[8] Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire reports castration of defeated Byzantine Greeks at the hands of the Frankish marquis Theobald of Camerino and Spoleto in the course of 10th-century wars in Italy.
[14] In medieval England, men found guilty of high treason were hanged, drawn and quartered, which often included emasculation (removal of the genitalia).
[24] Men were castrated and made into state slaves during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) to perform forced labor for projects such as the Terracotta Army.
[34] When the Ming army finally captured Yunnan from Mongols in 1382, thousands of prisoners were killed and, according to the custom in times of war, their young sons—including Zheng He—were castrated.
[36] At the end of the Ming dynasty, there were about 70,000 eunuchs (宦官 huànguān, or 太監 tàijiàn) employed by the emperor, with some serving inside the Forbidden City.
The emasculation of captured Chinese boys guaranteed a continuous supply of eunuchs to serve in the Liao dynasty harem.
She then ordered the castration of around 100 ethnic Chinese boys she had captured in China, supplementing the Khitan's supply of eunuchs to serve at her court, among them was Wang Ji'en.
[40][41] The History of Liao 遼史 described and praised Empress Chengtian's capture and mass castration of the Chinese boys in a biography on Wang Ji'en.
Records show that the Vietnamese performed castration in a painful procedure by removing the entire genitalia with both penis and testicles being cut off with a sharp knife or metal blade.
[69][70] A 1499 entry in the Ming Shilu recorded that 13 Chinese men from Wenchang including a young man named Wu Rui were captured by the Vietnamese after their ship was blown off course while traveling from Hainan to Guangdong's Qin subprefecture (Qinzhou), after which they ended up near the coast of Vietnam, during the Chenghua Emperor's rule (1447–1487).
Twelve of them were enslaved to work as agricultural laborers, while the youngest, Wu Rui (吳瑞) was selected for castration since he was the only young man and he became a eunuch attendant at the Vietnamese imperial palace in Thang Long.
The local chief planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese, but Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the palace.
The Vietnamese government mandated that boys born with defective genitalia were to be reported to officials, in exchange for the town being freed from mandatory labor requirements.
A temporary "chemical castration" has been studied and developed as a preventive measure and punishment for several repeated sex crimes, such as rape or other sexually related violence.
According to the reports compiled by Council of Europe, a human-rights forum, the central European country physically castrated at least 94 prisoners in the 10 years up to April 2008.
[89] According to Dr. Martin Hollý, director of the Psychiatric Hospital Bohnice in Prague, none of the nearly 100 sex offenders who had been physically castrated had committed further offences.
[91][92] In 2020, the Pakistani-controlled section of Kashmir passed a bill allowing for convicted child sex abusers to be chemically or surgically castrated.
[99][100] Castration and other forms of male genital mutilation have been practiced against enemy soldiers and civilians from ancient times to the twenty-first century.
[108][109][110][111] According to the prosecutors, 101 cases of sexual violence against Ukrainian men by occupying Russian forces have been recorded, including 50 in the Kherson region.
In modern times, the Mexican Javier Medina is the only professional opera singer who can perform as a castrato, since he had an involuntary chemical castration, as a result of a cancer treatment that he had before he reached puberty.
Given Jesus' frequent use of metaphor and hyperbole, e.g. Luke 9:62, the Catholic Church has broadly discouraged any understanding of this passage as recommending literal "self-castration".
[126] A subject of castration who is altered before the onset of puberty will retain a high voice, as well as the effects of hypogonadism, which include non-muscular build, an infantile penis, a lack of a beard, more developed subcutaneous fat.
Domestic animals are usually castrated to avoid unwanted or uncontrolled reproduction; to reduce or prevent other manifestations of sexual behaviour such as defending the herd from humans and other threats, or intra-herd aggression (e.g. fighting between groups of entire (uncastrated) males of a species); or to reduce other consequences of sexual behavior that may make animal husbandry more difficult, such as boundary/fence/enclosure destruction when attempting to get to nearby females of the species.
Livestock may be castrated when used for food to prevent indiscriminate breeding, control aggression, and improve meat and carcass quality.
[138] Consequently, in commercial meat production, male pigs are either castrated shortly after birth or slaughtered before they reach sexual maturity.
The term stag is used for a male animal castrated after the secondary sex characteristics have developed to such a point as to give him the appearance of sexual maturity.
Methods of veterinary castration include instant surgical removal, the use of an elastrator tool to secure a band around the testicles that disrupts the blood supply, the use of a Burdizzo tool or emasculators to crush the spermatic cords and disrupt the blood supply, pharmacological injections and implants and immunological techniques to inoculate the animal against his own sexual hormones.
Certain animals, like horses and swine, are usually surgically treated with a scrotal castration (which can be done with the animal standing while sedated and after local anesthetic has been applied), while others, like dogs and cats, are anesthetised and recumbent when surgically castrated with a pre-scrotal incision in the case of dogs, or a pre-scrotal or scrotal incision used for cats.
The Canadian Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Beef Cattle requires that, as of 2018, calves older than six months be castrated using pain control.
