Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Paris Review

    One Word: Castration

    by Gavin Francis Jun 19, 2018 7 minutes

    Anonymous, Non biedt kat vis aan in ruil voor penis (detail), 1555

    We defend ourselves not against castration anxiety but against death, a far more absolute castration.

    —Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

    The university library at my medical school was shared with students of veterinary medicine. Sometimes I’d find myself at a desk opposite one of the vet students; we’d glance at one another’s textbooks with curiosity, occasionally open at the same subjects—hematology, say, or orthopedic surgery. It was reassuring to see how much common ground there was between medicine for humans and medicine for animals.

    One day, I was revising prostate cancer: the appearance of its malignant cells under a microscope, the stages of its spread, the radiotherapy, brachytherapy (embedding of radioactive pellets into the tumor), and standard chemotherapies used to treat it. In health, the prostate gland stores semen and mature sperm; it has strong muscular walls that squeeze during ejaculation. Exposure to a lifetime of testosterone increases the growth of the gland as well as its susceptibility to cancers. Many treatments for prostate cancer work by blocking testosterone’s generation within the testicles—with no testosterone, the growth of the tumor slows.

    “All that

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Paris Review

    The Paris Review35 min read
    An Eye In The Throat
    My father answers the phone. He is twenty-three years old, and, as everyone does in the nineties, he picks up the receiver without knowing who is calling. People call all day long, and my parents pick up and say, “Hello?” and then people say, “It’s C
    The Paris Review1 min read
    Credits
    Cover: Courtesy of Nicolas Party and the Modern Institute /Toby Webster Ltd. Page 12, courtesy of Alice Notley; pages 32, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 52, 55, 56, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; page 59, photograph by Marco Delogu, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri; pages
    The Paris Review19 min read
    The Beautiful Salmon
    I’ve always loved salmon. Not to eat, as I don’t eat fish, but I’ve always loved salmon in general because salmon jump and no one knows why. They jump all over the place—out of rivers, up waterfalls. Some say they jump to clean their gills. Others sa

    Related Books & Audiobooks