In the Hindu manuals there are enumerated and described such varied potions and unguents and drugs that masculine activity, according to legend, can be prolonged continuously to the extent of hundreds of individual and successive occasions.
In the South Seas a stimulating drink, consumed after wedding ceremonies and other notable occasions, is made from the roots of the plant kava piperaceae. The root is chewed and then the juice extruded into a bowl: the liquid is then strained and served.
In the Orient, from the bird known as King’s Crow, the extracted bile is compounded into an amatory philtre.
A certain perfume popular among Arabs for amatory stimulus is known as dufz.
All sorts of drugs, both in their natural state and in synthetic preparations, dangerous in their application and fatal in their effects, have frantically been enlisted as erotic attendants. The venereal passion has thus frequently transcended health, sanity, and the continuance of life itself. Among such drugs, draughts, and preparations are: damiana, absinthe, yohimbine, adrenaline, brucine, aphrodisin, amanita muscaria, belladonna, borax, hashish, cocaine, bhang, mescaline, bufotenin, rauwiloid, harmine.
Among gruesome items used for libidinous purposes was human dried liver. The Romans were familiar with this ingredient, and Horace, the first century B.C. poet, makes mention of it in describing the dark operations of a witch.
Formerly used as a love charm was dragon’s blood: a red resin extracted from the fruit of a palm tree called botanically calamus draco. Cast into a fire, dragon’s blood was believed, when accompanied by a binding spell in the form of a rhyming couplet, to induce an errant lover to return to the object of his passion.
Dog-stones, tubers of the orchis species, are shaped like the testiculi canis, and hence are so called. At one time this plant was assumed to have an amatory virtue.
In the case of women, darnel grass was considered an amatory provocation, when mixed with barley meal, myrrh, and frankincense.
The comparatively innocuous cucumber, used domestically in salads, has sometimes been credited, mainly for its phallic shape, with venereal properties.
In the Orient, the aromatic plant cumin, which is used as a condiment, is also considered aphrodisiacally. So with the pungent berry cubeb, native to Java, and used in cooking and medicinally.