That is the substance of Minski’s argumentation. In this century, William Seabrook, the American writer who adventured in West Africa, the Caribbean Islands, and Arabia, himself describes the eating of human flesh in one of his personal narratives.
In the opinion of the medieval Italian physician Johannes Benedict Sinibaldus, author of the Geneanthropoeia, a compound of dried black ants was a frequent means of creating amatory desire. The ants were soaked in oil and stored for use in a glass jar.
Incense, particularly in the Orient, has immemorially been considered a priapic stimulant. In Biblical literature, in Exodus, the Lord gives directions for the preparation of a sacred, divine incense. It is to be composed of onycha and galbanum, stacte, pure frankincense, and spices: the whole to be reduced to a fine powder.
The most potent philtre or potion is the instinctive, natural, physiological desire. This maxim has been postulated by many erotologists and sexologists. It is forcefully so asserted by Robert Burton, the seventeenth century encyclopedist who, while searching for a clue to the cure of melancholy, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, simultaneously searched through all the chronicles, histories, and treatises of his predecessors.
Philtres, he asserts, and charms, amulets and figurines, periapts and unguents are basically unlawful means: they are, actually, the last resort in the amatory quest. Panders and bawds and the attendants on erotic provocations give some meagre aid in this respect. Beyond that, there is nothing but magic enchantments, Satanic assistance. ‘I know,’ confesses Burton, ‘that there be those that denye the devil can do any such things, and that there is no other fascination than that which comes by the eyes.’ He then quotes from Pietro Aretino, the Italian erotic poet, in relation to Lucretia’s amatory power:
One accent from thy lips the blood more warmes, Than all their philtres, exorcisms, and charms.
Lucretia’s erotic faculty was such that she could accomplish, merely by kissing and embracing, her sole philtre, as she admitted, more than all the philosophers, astrologers, alchemists, necromancers, and witches.
Lucretia used neither potions nor herbs. With all my science, she said, I could never stir the hearts of men: only by my embraces, the warmth of my lips. I forced men to rave like wild beasts, and countless among them I drove into bestial stupefaction, with the result that they adored me and my love like an idol.