ASEXUALIZATION, 
aS a 
PENALTY FOR CRIME AND REFORMATION 
OF CRIMINALS. 
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE CINCINNATI ACADEMY OF 
MEDICINE, FEBRUARY 27, i88». 
By ORPHEUS EVERTS, M. D„ 
Sup't Cincinnati Sanitarium, 
College Hill, Ohio. 
W. B. Carpenter & Co., Cln. ASEXUALIZATION. 
BY ORPHEUS EVERTS, M. D., 
Superintendent Cincinnati Sanitarium, 
College Hill, Ohio. 
A medical correspondent of the Lancet-Clinic, October 15th, 
1887, referring to a suggestion by I)r. Agnew that emasculation as a 
penalty for the crime of rape would be followed, if inflicted legally, by 
satisfactory results, approves the suggestion, as if this penalty were 
novel and untried; and asks if the subject cannot be brought before 
the Academy of Medicine for discussion, with a view to influencing 
legislation for its adoption. 
Having given the subject of emasculation a good deal of atten- 
tion in the course of twenty years’ constant association with, and study 
of, one of the several defective classes of society—not, it is true, as a 
contemplated penalty for the crime of rape, but as a possibly impor- 
tant factor in the great social problem of lessening the burden of soci- 
ety by bettering the condition and lessening the numbers of the 
defective classes,—I beg leave to submit for the consideration of 
this learned body a proposition imperfectly embodying conclusions 
arrived at, and to offer in support a brief and desultory commentary. 
The proposition may be formulated thus: 
Surgical asexualization of all criminals convicted of offenses that, 
circumstantially considered, indicate constitutional depravities that 
are recognized as transmissible by heredity, is not only practicable, 
but expedient, for the protection of society against the ever-impending 
danger of invasion by the “savages of civilization,” known as the 
vicious, criminal, or defective classes.—and would, properly enforced 
by law, eventuate in an effectual diminution of crime and reformation 
of criminals. 2 
The scope of this proposition is much broader than that contem- 
plated by Dr. Agnew and the Lanckt-Clinic’s correspondent, and is 
based upon considerations much more complex and comprehensive 
than a species of revenge naturally suggested to persons whose civil- 
ization is but a veneering, for all offenses against the written and un- 
written laws of society regulating commerce of the sexes, and often 
practiced by outraged, or enraged, avengers of hymenial infidelity or 
family dishonor; as, for example, by the relatives of the noble but 
unfortunate Heloise upon her priestly lover and seducer, Abelard, 
whose name, inseparable from hers, has filled for centuries so large a 
page in the history of true lovers’ constancy and martyrdom. 
In order to comprehend more fully the purport of the proposition 
submitted, it may be well to consider carefully the following facts, viz.: 
(a) —Among all undeveloped peoples punishment for offenses, 
criminal or otherwise," is retaliatory, vindictive and cruel; the primary 
purpose being to gratify revengeful feelings by the infliction of pain 
upon the offender; and, secondarily, to terrify others by the exhibi- 
tion of cruelty and power. Further on in the history of human prog- 
ress ideas of compensatory justice appears, and an eye for an eye and 
a tooth for a tooth is demanded; or certain equivalents, not in kind, 
are made acceptable, as punitive, for misdemeanors affecting rights of 
property, etc., etc., or for minor offenses affecting the rights of 
persons. 
(b) —But, step by step with the evolution of morals, characteristic 
of, and inevitably concomitant with, higher reaches of human develop- 
ment, especially appreciable within the last two or three centuries, the 
disposition to punish criminals by way of retaliation—blood for blood, 
blow for blow, and burning for burning—has been undergoing well- 
marked modification. The tendency has been, and is, in all civilized 
States called Christian,—not toleration of crime or forgiveness of 
criminals, but a more charitable, because a more intelligent, consider- 
ation of the relation of criminal conduct to antecedent and concomi- 
tant conditions affecting the lives and characters of the guilty, and a 
recognition of duties imposed upon society, growing out of such 
relations. 3 
We have reached a plane of perceptions, indeed, in this country, 
where such considerations and recognitions have displaced, to a great 
extent, ancient ideas of retaliatory and compensatory justice, and the 
nature of the responsibility of individuals growing out of their relation 
to society. 
The question with us in considering any new proposition respect- 
ing criminal jurisprudence now is—not what kind or degree of torture 
indictable upon the guilty will satisfy the indignation or appease the 
anger of offended innocence, or intimidate most effectually the evil- 
minded and criminally-disposed, but what kind o’f treatment shall 
criminals receive at the hands of society, consistent with its self- 
protection, most likely to eventuate in a general betterment of their 
conditions, and consequent improvement of their dispositions? In 
other words, by what method of punishment, the most kindly and 
considerate, can society be most effectually protected from injury and 
apprehension; crime most effectually diminished and prevented, and 
criminals most effectually reformed? 
In proposing asexualization as a penalty for crime the foregoing 
question has not been overlooked nor evaded. Hence, the use of the 
term “asexualization” as implying its applicability to both sexes, in- 
stead of “emasculation,” as applicable to men only. Hence, also, 
the extension of its applicability to an entire class of offenders, how- 
ever variable their crimes, instead of its limitation to such only as do 
violence to the laws governing the commerce of the sexes. 
Would a penal enactment embodying the proposition under con- 
sideration answer the demands of civilized society as above indicated ? 
If so, it should be unhesitatingly adopted; if not, it should be as un- 
hesitatingly rejected. It is my present belief that it would—that, in 
accordance with physiological and psychological facts and principles, 
such consequences would follow the intelligent enforcement of this 
proposed method of treating criminals, as would, after a time, fully 
vindicate the wisdom of its adoption. 
In support of this affirmation the following considerations are re- 
spectfully submitted, viz.: 
(a)—The conduct, speech and action of all human beings are 
expressive of the organic instincts, capabilities and appetencies, in- 4 
dieative of the necessities or desires of such beings. 
(b) —The organic instincts, capabilities and appetencies of all liv- 
ing beings, indicative of their necessities and desires, manifested by 
their conduct, speech and action, may be classed under one or the 
other of two heads; as pertaining to either the “love of life,” or the 
“love of sex,” the end of one being preservation of self, the end of 
the other being reproduction of self, the end of both being perpetua- 
tion of the race. 
(c) —Man is not an exceptional being as to his becoming, subsist- 
ing, reproducing, or disappearing, individually or as a race; differing 
only structurally and functionally from other living beings of the order 
to which, zoologically considered, he belongs, to the extent of certain 
modifications of organs and functions common to the order, affected 
by disuse or increased activity in adapting themselves to new uses, 
under the pressure of ever-increasing capabilities and necessities, 
aided by the fixing quality of heredity. Therefore, all human con- 
duct, however exalted or debased, whether in pursuit of gain or glory 
—power on earth or heavenly approbation—or the gratification of 
grosser and more groveling appetites of the primary senses, may be 
referred to one or the other of these organic loves—the love of life or 
the love of sex. 
(d) —The love of life precedes, outlasts, and is stronger than the 
love of sex. Beginning with the specialization of matter as a living 
being, it continues and increases through all the stages of growth— 
diminishing with retrogressive motion, to disappear only with the final 
dissolution of the individual. 
The love of sex develops with the development of sexual capa- 
bilities—appearing comparatively later in the growth of the more 
highly organized and intellectually capable beings—growing stronger 
with the natural growth and exercise of functional capabilities, to 
culminate and diminish, leaving but a memory, long before the limit 
of individual expectation of life has been reached. 
(e) —By far the greater exhibition of vicious conduct, including 
crimes characteristic of the defective criminal classes of society, per- 
tains to that period of individual human existence remarkable for the 
activity, strength, and domination of the love of sex, and is intimately 5 
related thereto, as well as associated therewith. Witness, for example, 
the daily chronicle of crime—of homicide, suicide, defalcation, embez- 
zlement, etc., ascribed directly to sexual influence, or motives associa- 
ted with sexual love ! Witness, also, the vices of intemperance, so often 
associated with, and instigated by, sexual excesses or unsatisfied sexual 
desires! of prostitution, maintained by lust! of gambling with delu- 
sive hope of gain to satisfy immediate wants growing out of the re- 
quirements of sexual relations, etc.; and the nameless disorderly 
sensations, emotional and imaginative, leading or driving multitudes 
crimewards, that originate in sexual disturbance, whether of depriva- 
tion or excess. 
(f) —The physical or structural, and consequently psychical char- 
acteristics of the defective classes of society, manifested by well- 
marked proclivities to mental disorder, vice or crime, developed 
under circumstances, often, to be regarded as unfavorable for such 
manifestations, are reproducible and being constantly reproduced, 
perpetuated, and multiplied with a tendency to exaggeration, by'inter- 
marriage of persons of like defects, according to the recognized laws, 
or uniformity of results of the activities of living matter, called 
heredity. 
(g) —Society can protect itself from the danger threatened by the 
criminal classes either by destroying their capabilities to inflict injury 
upon others, or by changing their desires, and consequently their pur- 
poses, by which their actions are instigated and controlled. 
(h) —The deprivation of animals, including man, of reproductive 
capabilities effects well-marked modifications of characteristics, or 
change of desires, purposes and actions, as an inevitable sequence of 
changed conditions, capabilities, appetencies, and necessities, of the 
altered being,—without destroying capabilities and consequent desires 
for the maintenance of individual existence, hence, for practical useful- 
ness. Such modifications, if begun early in life, are invariably mani- 
fested by gentler and more dispassionate manners, freedom from 
sudden and violent emotional disturbances, and less self-assertiveness 
and obstinacy of disposition. 
(/i)—One of nature’s methods of improving species or varieties of 
living beings is by selection through sexual love of the most lovable, for 6 
purposes of reproduction; the most lovable being always the strongest, 
most capable, and most beautiful—and the assertion of strength or 
capability in the struggle for existence, in which the fittest, most capa- 
ble, survive; and the unfit, deficient, perish. 
If these affirmations are all true, as I believe them to be, then 
certainly no other method could be devised for the suppression of 
crime, and the reformation or improvement of criminal and defective 
classes of society than this proposed—the asexualization of all convicts 
whose crimes, circumstantially considered, indicate constitutional 
depravity transmissible by descent from parents to offspring—together 
with such legal restraint as may be found necessary to complete its 
efficiency. 
Let us examine the promising features a little more closely and in 
detail. 
For purposes of intimidation it presents features second only in 
degree of repulsiveness and terrifying power to the death-penalty it- 
self. Multitudes of men derive nearly all conscious pleasure from the 
indulgence of sexual appetite, and hence regard such indulgence as 
the chief end of being, or value of existence. The loss of sexual 
capability as a token of manhood, as well as a source of exquisite en- 
joyment, would be contemplated with abhorrence and avoided if 
possible by all sane men. 
For purposes of reformation it presents features more promising 
than any other known method, because it is in accordance,, with the 
great facts recognized by science, that all feelings, desires, purposes, 
and consequently all conduct, is definitely related to antecedent con- 
ditions of living mechanisms, and may be permanently modified by 
permanent modifications of such mechanisms or organs. Other 
methods, “ moral instruction ” of convicts in prison, etc., are too slow 
and uncertain for practical purposes. 
But the most important of all the features of this proposition to 
asexualize all constitutionally depraved convicts is that which promises 
to surely, however slowly, diminish the number of the defective classes 
of society by limiting, to the extent of its application, the reproductive 
capability of such classes. For this purpose it has no practicable 
competitor. It is in the line of Nature’s suggestion, aiding “natural 7 
selection” by destroying the procreative capabilities of the “unfit” 
instead of, as we are now doing, carefully preserving them by public 
benefactions from their own tendencies to dissolution, and complais- 
ently permitting them to multiply and accumulate by unrestricted 
reproduction. 
It may be asked, significantly I admit: Why not capital punish- 
ment, once for all, and have done with them? 
Because, I answer, the deat|i-penalty, however promptly and 
thoroughly efficacious as a means of contributing to a more certain 
and rapid disappearance of the unfit and survival of the fittest, goes 
beyond the necessities of the case or the requirements of Nature and 
destroys the man, while emasculation only “alters” him. Furthermore, 
whatever may have been the effect of the death-penalty in the progress 
of society from a savage state to its present civilization (and there can 
be no question of its great value in times past) it has been gradually 
forced by growing sentiments of disfavor into narrower ranges of 
usefulness, until now, instead of being extended to all manner of 
crimes and misdemeanors, from wilful murder to petty theft or trespass, 
it is limited in most States to two or three grand offenses, and by 
some States utterly abolished. It is, in fact, only when the sub- 
cuticular ancestral savagery of our natures is aroused by some 
extraordinarily atrocious crime, such as the assassination of Garfield 
or the murder of policemen in Chicago, that we hear a general clamor 
for the blood of the. offender. And even in such instances public 
sentiment is by no means unanimous in favor of killing the con- 
victed criminal. 
It may be safely inferred, therefore, that the death-penalty will 
never be restored to favor sufficiently to obviate the necesssity of 
more efficient measures than have as yet been adopted by civilized 
States for the reformation of convicts and the diminution of the 
defective classes of society. 
Imprisonment alone for short terms at labor or in solitude, 
however cruelly or humanely practiced, with “moral instruction” or 
without, protects society but partially and for short intervals, and fails 
signally to reform the imprisoned or diminish the numbers of the 
classes to which they belong Were each man or woman returned to 8 
society from our penitentiaries deprived of reproductive capabilities 
how different would be the story. Public sentiment might not now 
sustain such an innovation. The public sentiment of the future is 
destined to be more and more informed by science, and will eventually 
adopt its suggestions in matters of state, craft and social economies, 
including criminal jurisprudence, as well as all other affairs of life. 
This world with its inhabitants is gradually but surely moving 
into a new and more brilliant light, and freeing itself from the shadows 
of ancient errors and modern superstitions. Already the hill-tops of 
science are luminous, and men of intelligence and learning no longer 
dwell in an atmosphere of gloom peopled with imaginary beings, gods, 
and demons, and multitudinous ghostly survivals of ancestral chimeras, 
standing in the relation of invisible causes to all visible effects; but 
moving ever on and up toward the greater light, realize the fact that 
with every step taken vision becomes clearer and more comprehensive, 
and that positions may be occupied to-day with safety that but yester- 
day seemed to be dangerous, if not inaccessible. 
Noth—This paper was published in The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic, March 31st, 1888. 
Since a more recent discussion of the subject by the Distinguished Surgeon-General of the 
U. S. A. (retired), I have had so many applications for copies of th* paper, that I have 
thought proper to reprint it for more general distribution. E.