I just watched a compilation of delightful castration clips from the movies (no link sorry too NSFW but google castration horror movies and I am sure it will pop up top)
anyway one theme was that the poor man would sometimes bleed to death upon being castrated (and untreated) which I have heard elsewhere too. Would this be true if just the testes were removed by say cutting? Or would it have to be the whole hog? The movies were not always clear about the precise procedure.
I am by no means a professional on the matter, but i believe that most people will bleed to death if they castrate themselves without medical attention. In my opinion, the more you cut off the more likely you are to bleed to death. Then agian i am not a professional
I recall reading many years ago, that amputation of the penis is likelier to lead to life-threatening bleeding or embolisms as you have major bloodflow there – and I would suppose things would be made even worse if not enough stump is left to properly torniquet it. In the case of the testes, considering that for centuries we have succesfully gelded livestock and eunuchs, it would seem it’s a more survivable injury if done properly (as, say, a livestock gelder would) as opposed to simply hacking away; but in both cases, it is a grievous wound.
Since even the grossest and most appalling topics need their terms precisely defined, let us draw some necessary distinctions here:
To “castrate” usually means to remove the testicles, sometimes by amputating the whole scrotum but sometimes by just removing the testes from the scrotal sac.
“Emasculate” is often used to mean the amputation of the penis, though dictionaries consider it a synonym for castration or a general term for removal of any part of the male genitalia.
Or else a clamp is applied to the base of the scrotum to damage blood flow so that the testes wither in place. In less technological days the testes would be directly crushed in-place, and I suppose the scrotum could be tied off tightly before cutting, and then maybe cauterized.
Whatever the case, the point is the skilled procedure leaves a reasonably easy to bind wound, cutting only what needs to be cut (and AFAIK always leaving the penis alone), as opposed to the potential for massive injury by an unskilled hand with the wrong tools.