Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs. John Marriott Davenport

69 The Knights Templars accused of adoring it 69 Mandrake, Weir's description of it 70 Mandrake under the name of Mandragora used as a charm 70 Macchiavelli's Comedy of La Mandragora and Voltaire's account of it 71 Love potions, Venetian law against them 72 Richard III. accuses Lady Grey of witchcraft 72 Maundrell's account of the Dudaïm 73 Singular Aphrodisiac used by the Amazons 75 Philters, or love potions used by the ancients 75 Hippomanes, wonderful powers of, as an aphrodisiac 79 Recipes for love-potions 80 Fish an aphrodisiac—Hecquet's anecdote 86 Mollusca, truffles and mushrooms used as aphrodisiacal 88 George IV.'s appreciation of truffles (note) 88 Effect of truffles described by a lady 89 xiiLatin epigram on the vices of the monks 90 Naïveté of a monk on the score of adultery 91 Curious Quatrain in the Church of St. Hyacinth 91 Madame Du Barri's secret 93 Do., Do., description of (note) 93 Tablettes de Magnanimité—Poudre de joie—Seraglio Pastilles 94 Musk, Cantharides—effects of the latter 96 Cardinal Dubois' Account of a Love-Potion 98 Caricature upon Dubois (note) 98 Indian Bang 104 Stimulating Powers of Odours 106 Cabanis quoted 107 D'Obsonville quoted 108 Portable Gold—Shakespeare quoted 109–110 Bouchard's Account of Aphrodisiacal Charms 111 Flagellation—Graham's Celestial Bed—Lady Hamilton—Lord Nelson, &c. 121–126 Burton quoted 126

      Anti-Aphrodisiacs:

Refrigerants—Recommendation of Plato and Aristotle	128–129
Sir Thos. Brown quoted	130
Origen	130
Camphor an anti-aphrodisiac	134
Coffee an anti-aphrodisiac—Abernethey's saying (note)	137
Infibulation, Holyday quoted	141–144
Bernasco Padlocks	144
Voltaire's poem of the Cadenas	146
Rabelais' anti-aphrodisiacal remedies	147–154

Plate I. EGYPTIAN PHALLI. and Pompeian House—sign.

ESSAY I.

      REMARKS UPON THE SYMBOLS OF THE

       REPRODUCTIVE POWERS.

      

ROM the investigations and researches of the learned, there appears to be no doubt but that the most ancient of all superstitions was that in which Nature was contemplated chiefly under the attribute or property of fecundity; the symbols of the reproductive power being those under which its prolific potencies were exhibited. It is not because modern fastidiousness affects to consider those symbols as indecent, and even obscene, that we should therefore suppose them to have been so regarded by the ancients: on the contrary, the view of them awakened no impure ideas in the minds of the latter, being regarded by them as the most sacred objects of worship. The ancients, indeed, did not look upon the pleasures of love with the same eye as the moderns do; the tender union of the sexes excited their veneration, because religion appeared to consecrate it, inasmuch as their mythology presented to them all Olympus as more occupied with amatory delights than with the government of the universe.

The reflecting men of those times, more simple, but, it must be confessed, more profound, than those of our own day, could not see any moral turpitude in actions regarded by them as the design of nature, and as the acme of felicity. For this reason it is that we