(from Latin, castrare: to castrate) The removal of the reproductive organs: TESTES from a male or the OVARIES from a female. Castration is a surgical procedure used experimentally in studies of SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, and of the effects of SEX HORMONES on both behaviour and physiology. The loss of sex hormones provided by the testes or ovaries can be examined, and the controlled resupply of missing hormones examined.
Note that castration refers to removal of the organs of reproduction from either males or females: GONADECTOMY which involves, like castration, removal of the GONADS (testes in males, ovaries in females)—is a term that has a more nonsexist ring to it. In general one thinks of castration as a procedure involving males rather than females.
In farm animals and race horses it is the males rather than females that are castrated to change their growth (a procedure known as gelding). OVARIECTOMY is the more common term for removal of the ovaries. A further point of association between the use of the term castration and specifically males is the fact that in humans, castrati were male singers who had had, as youths, their testes removed to prevent their voices from breaking. Good castrati were highly paid and honoured musicians, and in pre-twentieth-century Europe, a large poor family having a son with a fine clear treble voice would count themselves fortunate to have the opportunity to develop a castrato who could rescue them from their poverty. Much operatic and religious music written for soprano voice was in fact intended not for women but for castrati. Some recordings of the last of the castrati exist and are remarkable, the high voice of the singers having a range and power unlike a falsetto, a boy or female soprano.
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