nd Pollux are commonly judged to portend a cessation of the storm, and a future calm; being rarely seen till the tempest is nigh spent. Helena alone portends ill, and witnesses the severest part of the storm yet behind. When the meteor sticks to the masts, yards, &c. they conclude, from the air's not having motion enough to dissipate this flame, that a profound calm is at hand; if it flutter about, it indicates a storm.
**CASTOREUM,** in the Materia Medica, CASTOR; the inguinal glands of the beaver. The ancients had a notion that it was lodged in the testicles; and that the animal when hard pressed would bite them off, and leave them to its pursuers, as if conscious of what they wanted to destroy him for. The best sort of castor is what comes from Russia. So much is Russian castor superior to the American, that two guineas per pound are paid for the former, and only 8s. 6d. for the latter. The Russian castor is in large hard round cods, which appear, when cut, full of a brittle, red, liver-coloured substance, interspersed with membranes and fibres exquisitely interwoven. An inferior sort is brought from Dantzig, and is generally fat and moist. The American castor, which is the worst of all, is in longish thin cods. Russia castor has a strong disagreeable smell; and an acrid, bitterish, and nauseous taste. Water extracts the nauseous part, with little of the finer bitter; rectified spirit extracts this last without much of the nauseous; proof spirit both: water elevates the whole of its flavour in distillation; rectified spirit brings over nothing. Castor is looked upon as one of the capital nerve and antihysteric medicines; some celebrated practitioners, nevertheless, have doubted its virtues; and Neumann and Stahl declare Castration, in Surgery, the operation of gelding, i.e., of cutting off the testicles, and putting a male animal out of the capacity of generation.
Castration is in much use in Asia, especially among the Turks, who practise it on their slaves, to prevent any commerce with their women. The Turks often make a general amputation.
Castration also obtains in Italy, where it is used with a view to preserve the voice for singing. See Eunuch.
The Persians, and other eastern nations, have diverse methods of making eunuchs, different from those which obtain in Europe; we say, of making eunuchs, for it is not always done among them by cutting, or even collision. Cincta and other poisonous herbs do the same office, as is shown by Paulus Aegineta. Those eunuchised in this manner are called thibice. Besides which there is another sort, called thlasier, in whom the genitals are left entire, and only the veins which should feed them are cut; by which means the parts do indeed remain, but so lax and weak, as to be of no use.
Castration was for some time the punishment of adultery. By the laws of the Visigoths, sodomites underwent the same punishment.
By the civil law it is made penal in physicians and surgeons to castrate, even with consent of the party, who is himself included in the same penalty, and his effects forfeited. The offence of mayhem by castration is, according to all our old writers, felony; though committed upon the highest provocation. See a record to this purpose of Henry III., transcribed by Sir Edward Coke, 3 Inst. 62. or Blackstone's Com. vol. iv. p. 206.
Castration is sometimes found necessary on medicinal considerations, as in mortifications, and some other diseases of the testicles, especially the sarcocele and varicocele. Some have also used it in maniac cases.
Castration is also in some sort practised on women. Athenaeus mentions that King Andramytes was the first who castrated women. Hesychius and Suidas say Gyges did the same thing. Galen observes, that women cannot be castrated without danger of life; and Dalechampius, on the fore-mentioned passage of Athenaeus, holds, that it is only to be understood of simple padlocking.