What you wouldn't do for love....

I warned you all that my blogs will cover much more in-depth and adult content than Facebook allows. Beware and be careful. It's a historical jungle out there!

A eunuch is a castrated human male. The castration can be only of the testes, or also include the penis, known as a penectomy (often with a tube inserted to keep the urethra open, called a urethral rerouting). The practice was established before 700 BC and accounts of eunuchs are known throughout history.

According to Tom Burnham's Dictionary of Misinformation, a common misconception about eunuchs is that, since they were castrated, they were either unable or unwanting to defile or perform sexual intercourse with the women in the harem they were employed to watch over. This was not always true, however. If a eunuch was castrated after puberty, which was common, he would still be able to achieve an erection and engage in coitus, though no pregnancy could result. According to Burnham, many women preferred eunuchs as lovers since they never ejaculated and could, therefore, maintain erections longer.

In ancient China castration was both a traditional punishment (until the Sui Dynasty) and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs in the Imperial palace. The value of such employment—certain eunuchs gained immense power that may supersede that of the prime ministers—was such that self-castration had to be made illegal. The number of eunuchs in Imperial employ had fallen to 470 in 1912, when the employment ceased. The justification of the employment of eunuchs as high-ranking civil servants was that, since they were incapable of having children, they would not be tempted to seize power and start a dynasty. Concurrently, a similar system existed in Vietnam.