Medical Consequences of Castration and the Story of Varys

[Mithras]

From the Wiki;

A subject of castration who is altered before the onset of puberty will retain a high voice, non-muscular build, and small genitals. He may well be taller than average, as the production of sex hormones in puberty — more specifically, estrogen via aromatization of testosterone — stops long bone growth. The person may not develop pubic hair and will have a small sex drive or none at all.

Castrations after the onset of puberty will typically reduce the sex drive considerably or eliminate it altogether. Castrated people are automatically sterile, because the testes (for males) and ovaries (for females) produce sex cells needed for sexual reproduction. Once removed the subject is infertile. The voice does not change. Some castrates report mood changes, such as depression or a more serene outlook on life, although this might not be due to chemical changes but instead emotional changes due to the implications of the procedure. Body strength and muscle mass can decrease somewhat. Body hair may sometimes decrease. Castration prevents male pattern baldness if it is done before hair is lost. However, castration will not restore hair growth after hair has already been lost due to male pattern baldness.

Historically, many eunuchs who additionally underwent a penectomy reportedly suffered from urinary incontinence associated with the removal of the penis.

Without hormone replacement therapy (HRT), typical symptoms (similar to those experienced by menopausal women) include hot flashes, gradual bone-density loss resulting in osteopenia or osteoporosis, and potential weight gain or redistribution of body fat to the hips/chest. Replacement of testosterone in the form of gel, patches, or injections can largely reverse these effects, although breast enlargement has also been reported as a possible side effect of testosterone usage.

A study conducted at a mental institution in Kansas, where a large number of male inmates had been castrated, found that the eunuchs lived an average of 14 years longer than the uncastrated men. A similar study of historical eunuchs in Korea's royal court found a 14 to 19 year increase in lifespan compared to intact men of similar socioeconomic background; these eunuchs had a centenarian rate of over 3%.

The first problem about the official story of the castration of Varys is this. The wizard who cut him did not give a single shit about his life. So, he just cut him root and stem. However, people used to take special precautions to inhibit the urinary channel to have strictures.

When the penis was removed, nails were inserted into the urethra to avoid strictures, and such men were said to urinate while sitting or squatting.

If someone did not heal his urinary channels, Varys should have died from problems due to urinary strictures and infection. But he lived.

Too heavy even to stand unassisted, he could not hold his water, so he always smelled of piss, a stench so sharp that even heavy perfumes could not conceal it.

Even Varys healed normally, he should have problems with holding his water. We know that he wore heavy perfumes but he never stank piss like Yezzan did.

Varys said that he was cut when he was a boy. Yet his voice is very educated and he can change it as he likes.

Was Varys never castrated? Or did that happen after he grew an adult?

[King Hodorius]

This just made me think, yezzan could be the one castrated, and that could be related to him always smelling like piss.

[Shinjinobrave]

I would love it if Varys revealed himself not be a eunuch at all.

Just think about it: this is the man who passed as Rugen for years! He would have no trouble passing for a eunuch. He keeps this performance up all the time because nobody has reason to fear a eunuch as much, can't start his own family, can't bone your wife or daughter and become a part of yours. It also makes him less predictable, nobody would think of using conventional means to dispose of him, since they don't know what he wants.

I'm still convinced he is a eunuch though, and that GRRM just didn't read up on their fysionomy, but hey, I like to think of Varys as that guy from 'the prestige'...

[Greymoon]

I would love it if Varys revealed himself not be a eunuch at all.

Just think about it: this is the man who passed as Rugen for years! He would have no trouble passing for a eunuch. He keeps this performance up all the time because nobody has reason to fear a eunuch as much, can't start his own family, can't bone your wife or daughter and become a part of yours. It also makes him less predictable, nobody would think of using conventional means to dispose of him, since they don't know what he wants.

I'm still convinced he is a eunuch though, and that GRRM just didn't read up on their fysionomy, but hey, I like to think of Varys as that guy from 'the prestige'...

GRRM usually does thorough background research. I doubt he'd miss something like that - eunuchs figure in enough semi-historical sources; legends, myths and novels, that such traits imo, are well known -- if not necessarily in detail. Herodotus wrote about eunuchs at the court of Persian Kings for ex.... such sources are available to anyone, and an author of semi-historical/fantasy novels would imo, be well aware of their existence; Herodotus was after all, the "father of history" (and lies...)...anyway, I'd expect GRRM to have wondered about the consequences of castration...

Eunuchs have typically been spy masters; they were trusted with great secrets because they were considered as having no "drive" or ambitions of their own, since indeed they could never have a legacy; and lacked sexual appetite... they were trusted in the presence of the King's concubines and wives etc. etc. Varys, the Eunuch Spy Master fits imo, the typical and expected role of an eunuch at court...

It'd be rather grand if it was all a lie (I also want to see Varys riding a Dragon! he'll be King, maybe ;) )

out of interest: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eunuchs

According to Herodotus (8.105), the Persians, like other Oriental peoples, valued eunuchs highly for their trustworthiness. Ctesias and Xenophon date the appearance of eunuchs in Persia to the time of Cyrus the Great. It is possible that the Persians adopted the practice of castration from the Babylonians or Assyrians (Cook, p. 136; cf. also Meier, pp. 485-86). According to Xenophon, Cyrus the Great included eunuchs among his guards (Xenophon, Cyropædia 7.5.60-64). The most influential eunuch under Cyrus was Petisakas, who was sent to bring the former Median ruler Astyages to the Persian king (König, pp. 3f., par. 5). After the death of Petisakas his place at court was taken by Bagapates, who was charged with taking Cyrus’s body back to Persia (König, p. 5, par. 9). Later he guarded the tomb of Darius I for seven years (König, p. 9, par. 19). Aspadates and Izabates were two other influential eunuchs at the court of Cambyses (König, p. 5, par. 9).

Herodotus (3.77 f.) reports that eunuchs carried the king’s messages. The Book of Esther (1:10) names seven eunuchs who personally served Xerxes. Herodotus tells how a certain Hermotimus of Pedasa in Caria was captured by his enemies and sold to Panionius, a slave-dealer who bought boys of great beauty, castrated them, and sold them in Sardis or Ephesus. Later Hermotimus was sent from Sardis to the court of the Persian king, along with other gifts. Gradually, he became the most esteemed of Xerxes’s eunuchs and was put in charge of the royal children (Herodotus, 8.103-5). After the capture of Darius III’s harem by the soldiers of Alexander the Great, one of the eunuchs escaped from the prison camp to inform the king about the death of his wife (Plutarch, Alexander 30).

As part of their tribute, the Babylonians annually sent five hundred boys to the court of the Persian king to be made eunuchs (Herodotus 3.92). The five boys sent every third year by the Ethiopians and the hundred boys sent every five years by the Colchians and their neighbors probably were also made eunuchs (Herodotus 3.97). In 494 B.C.E., when a revolt of Ionian cities had been crushed, the Persians castrated the best-looking boys (Herodotus 6.9, 32).

the accounts from Herodotus are to be taken with a pinch of salt....

Edit: sorry cannot resist.... does that remind you of Varys?:

Beginning with Artaxerxes I, the eunuchs gained increasing influence over the king and his court. When Artaxerxes’s three sons contested the throne, eunuchs plotted on their behalf. Ctesias mentions the Paphlagonian eunuch Artoxares who helped Darius II rise to the throne and who later perished due to the intrigues of the queen Parysatis (König, pp. 16, 19f., 21; pars. 39, 40, 49, 53). Apparently, he was the Artaḫshar referred to in Babylonian documents as chief of the treasury during the reign of Darius II (Dandamayev, pp. 36-37; Stolper, pp. 91f., 103). When in 343 B.C.E. Artaxerxes III marched on Egypt, one of the Persian commanders was Bagōas (q.v.), a powerful eunuch who soon became a king-maker. He had Artaxerxes murdered and gave the throne to Arses, the youngest of the king’s sons. Two years later Arses also fell victim to a conspiracy by Bagōas who put Darius III on the throne. When Bagōas tried to murder the new king, he was compelled to drink the cup of poison himself (Diodorus Siculus 17.6.1-2 and 7; Dandamayev, pp. 64-65). Darius III took a crowd of eunuchs and 360 concubines on his campaign against Alexander the Great (Curtius Rufus 3.3.23-25; see also Plutarch, Artoxerxes 12, who tells of a eunuch who accompanied Artaxerxes II in a campaign).

[Greymoon]

Was Varys never castrated? Or did that happen after he grew an adult?

as you said, according to Varys he was still a boy. That was before he met Illyrio. He bears none of the expected sequels of castration. Thus, imo it is a lie -- there is no way that GRRM doesn't know at least about the voice and Castrato singers. the greater medical technicalities of it, like how much he was cut; how he healed; urinates and all that -- this, can have been left out, because deemed unimportant. But the voice, there is quite simply imo, no way....though, now that I think on it...what way are the unsullied described?

A castrato (Italian, plural: castrati) is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.

Castration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents a boy's larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. Prepubescent castration for this purpose diminished greatly in the late 18th century and was made illegal in Italy in 1870.

As the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses (bone-joints) did not harden in the normal manner. Thus the limps of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivaled lung-power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice. Their vocal range was higher than that of the uncastrated adult male (see soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, sopranist, countertenor and contralto). Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato (see below), one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a "super-high" tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that.

....

On Eunuchs at the Ottoman court -- plugs were used to prevent incontinence....Varys's smell or lack thereof, cannot be used as an argument then...but really, I'd not be surprised at all if it were all a lie.

The practice of employing eunuchs as palace functionaries in Constantinople (Istanbul) apparently began during the reign of the Emperor Justinian in the latter days of the Roman Empire and persisted through the Byzantine (27) and Ottoman eras (7). In contrast to China, ownership of eunuchs in Turkey was not limited to the royal palaces; any citizen who could afford the purchase price was entitled. Some eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire were from Russia or the Balkans, but from the 16th century black eunuchs were in charge of the harem in the Ottoman court, most commonly individuals from Ethiopia or Sudan who had been castrated as children (28). Slave dealers kidnapped some, and some were sold into slavery by their parents. According to Penzer, stopping points were used by the slave exporters, and it was during the halts at such places that the castration of the boys took place (7). According to other reports many of the boys were castrated at a monastery in Upper Egypt where Coptic priests performed the operation (29, 30).

The child was restrained on a chair; the phallus and scrotum were tied with a cord which was pulled taught, and the phallus, scrotum, and testes were removed as close as possible with a single stroke of a razor. Bleeding was stopped with boiling oil, and the wound was dressed with an extract of wax and tallow. In some instances hemostasis was achieved with hot sand, and the wound was dressed with an extract of acacia bark. The mortality was said to be high, only about one in three surviving. As in the case of the Skoptzy and the Chinese court eunuchs, a nail was introduced into the urethra to prevent stricture formation. The eunuchs squatted to urinate, and both urethral strictures and incontinence must have been common, because some eunuchs carried silver quills for self-catheterization, presumably because of strictures (7), and others used a removable plug (Fig. 2c) to prevent incontinence (31). Owing to the high death rate, the survivors were sold at high prices either to Turkey or to Persia (29). The physicians to the harem inspected the eunuchs on arrival to be certain that both penis and testes had been removed and reexamined them every few years to be certain that nothing was amiss (7). The eunuchs entered the court service at the lowest rank and passed successively through the grades of novice, middle grade, and highest rank. Strict rules of behavior were enforced for the eunuchs’ guild. Some took to learning and literature and served as tutors to the royal children; others rose to high administrative ranks (28). Some 200 eunuchs were said to have lived in the palace of Topkapi in Istanbul after the royal family had moved to other palaces (28), and after the Turkish revolution the eunuchs continued to be devoted servants until the royal family was sent into exile in March of 1924 (32).

http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.84.12.6206

more medical consequences:

Skeletal changes. Tandler and Grosz described failure of closure of the epiphyses in the skeleton of a eunuch (39) and subsequently in a 35-yr-old Ottoman eunuch who had been castrated at age 8 yr (12) Koch reported that thinning of the bones of the skull was evident by x-ray in all of the Skoptzy men examined and that kyphosis was common (Fig. 4) (13). Likewise, Wagenseil observed that 20 of the 31 Chinese eunuchs had kyphosis of the spine (Fig. 5) (18). These observations appear to have been made before it was recognized that kyphosis is a manifestation of severe osteoporosis in women (40).

Gynecomastia. Hikmet and Regnault reported that the breasts in the Ottoman court eunuchs became large and pendulous (30) Although not commented on by either author, gynecomastia is also evident in 5 of 9 photographs of Skoptzy men published by Koch (13) and in 7 of 14 photographs of Chinese eunuchs published by Wagenseil (19) (Fig. 5). Furthermore, Wu and Gu reported that 9 of the 26 subjects in their study had breast enlargement (25, 26). These observations of gynecomastia in castrated men are in keeping with the subsequent report by Heller, Nelson, and Roth that approximately half of men with functional prepubertal hypogonadism develop gynecomastia (45).

Apparent disappearance of the prostate. Androgen action is required for the development of the prostate gland during embryogenesis (47), and the prostate does not develop in men with mutations that profoundly impair the function of the androgen receptor (48) or of steroid 5α-reductase-2 (49). Furthermore, it has been known since the 19th century that prostatic hyperplasia does not develop in prepubertal castrates and that castration causes regression of the hyperplastic prostate (50). Hikmet and Regnault reported that the prostate became atrophic in the Ottoman court eunuchs (30).

Kyphosis of the spine and Gynecomastia should be noted from outward appearance, even if an examination would be required to determine the state of Vary's protaste...

[Mithras]

As explained here, castration before pubery is very risky. The body might not grow proportionally. But Varys seems normal, as well as the Unsullied. Varys uses powder on his face and the Unsıllied have absolutely no facial hair.

[Ygrain]

As explained here, castration before pubery is very risky. The body might not grow proportionally. But Varys seems normal, as well as the Unsullied. Varys uses powder on his face and the Unsıllied have absolutely no facial hair.

Could he be using powder to mask the fact that he has to shave? When he poised as Rugen, he was unshaven.

[Mithras]

Could he be using powder to mask the fact that he has to shave? When he poised as Rugen, he was unshaven.

He might be using fake beard and fake hair. Still, he can easily disguise himself as a gaoler with hair and beard and a begging brother. With training, people can use their voices at full capacity. However, if he was really cut before puberty, his voice should not be fully developed and he should have problem changing his voice. Same is true for the Unsullied by the way. Do they have childish voices? Amok's description seems accurate in terms of breasts and no body hair.

[Hand to King Davos]

Based on the Unsullied situation, I would bet that Martin just doesn't know. Either that, or he didn't learn until later, and at that point it was too late to change it.

And with regards to Varys, the guy who cut him was a sorcerer. No idea what he would have done, but magic is a definite possibility.

[Mithras]

Could he be using powder to mask the fact that he has to shave? When he poised as Rugen, he was unshaven.

Varys did not look at all like himself. A scarred face and a stubble of dark beard showed under his spiked steel cap, and he wore mail over boiled leather, dirk and shortsword at his belt.

Even his walk is different, Tyrion observed. The scent of sour wine and garlic clung to Varys instead of lavender. “I like this new garb of yours,” he offered as they went.

“The work I do does not permit me to travel the streets amid a column of knights. So when I leave the castle, I adopt more suitable guises, and thus live to serve you longer.”

“Leather becomes you."

[Mithras]

BTW, George admitted that he didnot know much about the consequences of dwarfism, therefore all that acrobacy of Tyrion is impossible.

[David Selig]

Based on the Unsullied situation, I would bet that Martin just doesn't know.

This. Or he chose to ignore the medical facts for plot convenience.

[bent branch]

I think it is very problematical to try to use science to explain anything in a work of fiction, particulary a fantasy novel. Consider this passage from Chapter 51-ADWD:

Snow slid from Ser Hosteen's cloaks as he stalked toward the high table, his steps ringing against the floor. A dozen Frey knights and men-at-arms entered behind him. One was a boy Theon knew - Big Walder, the little one, fox-faced and skinny as a stick. His chest and arms and cloak were spattered with blood.

The scent of it set the horses to screaming. Dogs slid out from under the tabless, sniffing. Men rose from the benches. The body in Ser Hosteen's arms sparkled in the torchlight, armored in pink frost. The cold outside had frozen his blood.

Notice in the first paragraph that the snow is sliding from Ser Hosteen's cloak in the warm room. Then notice that Little Walder's body is covered in frost. If the temperature in the room is sufficient melt the snow on Ser Hosteen's cloak, then it should be sufficient to melt the frost on Little Walder's body UNLESS the body is cold enough to form hoar frost.

Here is a definition of hoar frost from Dictionary.com:

a covering of minute ice needles, formed from the atmosphere at night upon the ground and exposed objects when they have cooled by radiation below the dew point, and when the dew point is below the freezing point.

What this basically means is that Little Walder's body is colder than the ambient room temperature, like it has laid in a snow bank all night. So if we are to use science in judging this scene, it appears that Walder was killed the night before. If you have ever had a cold drink in a frosted glass on a hot day, then you understand this concept. This is the reason that I don't believe the theory that Big Walder killed Little Walder and is still running around with Little Walder's blood all over him. However, I know that GRRM may not be aware that science would suggest that Little Walder had been killed the night before and I have to be prepared to be proven wrong in my estimation of Little Walder's time of death.

Similarly, whatever the real life effects of pre-pubescent castration on males are, we can't determine whether Varys is or is not a eunuch based on how similar this fictional character is to real life eunuchs.

Edited for clarity.