July 1, 1893. F. Hoyt Pilcher, upon his appointment as the Superintendent of the Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecile Children, implements a program of castration despite the absence of a law supporting such measures. He was one of the early physicians that performed sexual surgery on patients suffering from severe mental illness. His actions were in line with the medical opinion in Kansas that tended to promote sexual surgery as a treatment for mentally ill patients as early as 1890.

Pilcher believed that castration was necessary in order to prevent the patients from masturbating. According to historian, Mark Largent, “between 1893 and 1898, he [Pilcher] amputated the testicles of forty-four males and performed hysterectomies on fourteen females, whose average age at the time of the operation was twenty years” (Largent, 2011, p. 22).

-Erna Kurbegovic and Amy Dyrbye

• Largent, M. (2011). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.