Recourse to Medical Professors.
For several days following I suffered from shame and remorse. In order, if possible, to be cured of my abnormality, I now resolved to consult a specialist in venereal diseases, because at that time I believed my ailment came under that head. I was led to go to Dr. Prince A. Morrow, then the leading specialist in that line in New York City, who declared that either castration or marriage would be a sure cure for my abnormal passion! How many inverts have followed such advice of a physician, and seeking a cure in marriage, have been plunged into insanity or suicide, either on the eve of marriage, or soon after! Individuals like myself are women mentally. How is one woman to marry another, unless indeed one of the pair be a gynander, when marriage de facto often takes place. I could never think of tying myself to a wife until I felt myself to be a man.
Not satisfied, I immediately consulted another medical-college professor, this time an alienist, Dr. Robert S. Newton. Both drugs and electrical stimulation of the brain and spinal cord were tried. Hypnotism was attempted unsuccessfully. During the first month of treatment, I excluded from my mind all thoughts of sexual admiration. Then, though I continued to struggle against them, they would occasionally be present in the stream of thought for a few days, when with a fresh dedication of myself to God and to a life of self-renunciation, I would again completely banish them for another half-month.
Early Appeal for Castration.
After several months treatment, I was rendered almost a physical and nervous wreck by the powerful drugs administered, but my amorous desires showed no change. I now repeatedly appealed for castration. I argued that Nature had designed me to be a fille de joie—the worst fate possible as I then believed—and that castration alone could save me from it. But the answer was that I might in later years regret such a measure. I had recently read in a medical journal of a man similarly but not identically afflicted who was placed in possession of the normal procreative instinct through castration. During these months I had made diligent search at the library of the New York Academy of Medicine for light on my abnormality, and discovered a number of articles in American and foreign journals bearing on it.
During this course of treatment occurred one of the crises of my life. I had been appointed a delegate to a student’s missionary convention in another city, and was assigned to a room with a rather athletic student from another college. The first night, after he had fallen asleep, I left the bed and lay on the floor, but was driven back by the cold. All possible alternatives were out of the question. Previous to that day, I had not known how I would have to pass the night. The chances were good that I would be assigned to a room alone, or else have an unattractive bed-fellow inasmuch as nine out of ten religious and studious adolescents were sexually repulsive, although highly esteemed as friends. Possibly I was cold to them because I myself am of a religious and studious disposition, as well as deficient in physical stamina, as they also are inclined to be.
Usual Treatment of Inverts.
I lay awake the whole night, but during the last half was in a sort of delirium. I partially yielded. The next morning, before several other students, my bed-fellow spoke sarcastically of me, evidently intending to visit on me what he considered to be deserved punishment. I was crushed by reason of shame, and they never saw me again, as I left by the next train. At the time I wrote in my diary:
“What have I ever done that God should make me suffer so? I feel that my abnormality bars me out of the ministry, the profession of my choice, and most likely out of all other professions. I feel that this passion is going to wreck my life, and never permit me to make any return to my parents for all they have done for me. I have no hope for the future. In the convention, while I would be singing, I was in thought hacking my body to pieces with a sword, or piercing my breast with a dagger. My continuous prayer was: