Spices and Herbs as Aphrodisiacs, Love Potions, etc.

Spices have had a use in romantic life almost as long as they have been used in medicine – and the two were often connected. The use of cyclamen roots (Sowbread) in love potions was cited by Theophrastus and Dioscorides, but also commonly prescribed as a pessary by Hippocrates.

Mandrake has also had a long use in eroticism – the Eryngium of Pliny may well be mandrake, of which he said: ‘the root of it … bears a strong resemblance to the organs of either sex; it is but rarely found, but if a root resembling the male organs should happen to fall in the way of a man, it will ensure him woman’s love.’²³

John Gerard (1597) noted the appearance of the root ‘resembling the legs of a man, with other parts of his bodie adjoining thereto, as the privie part’, but wrote scathingly about the rumours spread by old wives, etc., such as it only growing under gallows ‘where the matter that hath fallen from the dead bodie, hath given it the shape of a man … besides many fables of loving matters, too full of scurrilitie to set foorth in print’.²⁴

Gerard also dwells on the orchid varieties he named Dog’s Stones, for obvious reasons given their two pronounced subspherical roots. He said that, according to Dioscorides, if men ate the fat root it would cause them to father male children, but if women ate the lesser withered root she would produce female children, with the caveat ‘These are some Doctors opinions onely’. Other varieties were Fooles Stones, Goates Stones, Satyrion, Foxes Stones, and so on. Jacobaea vulgaris (ragwort), aka ‘stinking willy’ because of the unpleasant smell of its leaves, has also been identified as satyrion, with supposed aphrodisiac qualities.

Shape of plants, then, is clearly a theme that has influenced the choice of aphrodisiacs, a none-too-subtle aid to the greater population.

Other herbs and spices that have been associated with aphrodisiacs at various times include asafoetida, camphor, cannabis, cinnamon, cubeb, frankincense, galangal, ginger, ginseng, liquorice, myrrh, nutmeg, pepper, poppy, saffron, sage, savory, spurge, tamarind, and tarragon, though this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Many spices, including aromatics and incenses, in the ancient world were outrageously expensive and exotic, which would have added to the mysterious charm of the sweet-smelling substances. Myrrh and frankincense were by far the most important in perfumes and incense.

In medieval Arabic medicine the study of aphrodisiacs bloomed. Constantine the African’s work (eleventh century CE) was influential – he wrote De Coitu, but the ninth-century Ibn al-Jazzar was probably a major influence.²⁵ Study didn’t rely purely on ancient Greek lore – cosmopolitan views and insights were sought from different cultures, including India.

The Kama Sutra is an Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality that almost everybody has heard about. It dates from the last centuries BCE to perhaps the third or fourth century CE. Mood enhancers are commonly mentioned: ‘When a lover comes to her abode, a courtesan should give him a mixture of betel leaves and betel nut, garlands of flowers, and perfumed ointments.’²⁶ Numerous methods of ‘subjugating women’ are detailed, the following being one of the least bizarre: ‘If a man, after anointing his lingam [penis] with a mixture of the powders of the white thorn apple, the long pepper, and the black pepper, and honey, engages in sexual union with a woman, he makes her subject to his will.’²⁷

Sexual vigour could be increased by numerous methods, including drinking milk mixed with sugar, Piper chaba, liquorice, and the root of the uchchata plant. Alternatively, ghee, honey, sugar, and liquorice in equal quantities, the juice of the fennel plant, and milk mixed together was described as ‘nectar-like’ and would have the same effect.

The Ananga-ranga is another Indian book of sexuality from the fifteenth or sixteenth century CE.²⁸ There are numerous prescriptions for sexual enhancers, including the following to hasten a woman’s orgasm: powdered aniseed mixed with honey to be applied to the penis before congress; pounded tamarind fruit mixed with honey and Sindura (red lead, minium, cinnabar, or red sulphuret of mercury!) applied the same way; and black peppercorns, thornapple seed, long pepper and Lodhora bark (?Symplocos racemosa), pounded in white honey.²⁹ Many other recipes were described – to delay the male’s orgasm, aphrodisiacs or medicines to increase sexual vigour, others for erectile disfunction, fertility, enlarging women’s breasts, cosmetics for hair and skin, etc. Some of the more well-known ingredients included camphor, costus, Euphorbia, liquorice, lotus, myrobalan, orris root and sesame. A whole further chapter is devoted to subduing, fascinating or attracting people, with some extremely bizarre potions and charms.

Musk and ambergris also found their way into the never-ending list of aphrodisiacs, both falling into the strange category of animal-derived spices. Musk is an aromatic substance obtained from the caudal gland of the male musk deer (genus Moschus), which is native to western and southern Asia. The musk deer bucks spread the secretions on to shrubs in order to attract females. The paste-like material was formerly used extensively by the perfume industry, but also as a flavouring in medieval and later cookery (in a surprisingly large number of recipes). Musk dries into a dark grainy substance and has a wild rankness about it. Musk and ambergris (another unappetising animal-derived product, this time from the digestive system of the sperm whale) were often used interchangeably in cooking. In the seventeenth century, the French commonly paired musk with ambergris in order to scent pastilles, pralines, marzipans, wines and sweet drinks. Ambergris has a faecal smell when freshly expelled but over a long period of time in the sea it evolves to a sweet and complex aroma.

Chocolate is a more conventional excitant (cacao should be considered a spice) and its reputation goes back to the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Francisco Hernandez was a physician and naturalist to the king who was sent to the New World in 1570 to look for medicinal plants – he came up with a chocolate recipe that contained vanilla, the leaves or flowers of a Piper species and the flower of Cymbopetalum penduliflorum, which supposedly had stimulating properties.³¹ Regardless of the veracity of this (or any other supposed aphrodisiac), chocolate must surely be the most popular of all modern ‘love potions’.

Aphrodisiacs of all kinds have been largely discredited by medicine and trivialised since the late 1800s; however, they endure and continue to fascinate.³²