With that alone Lucretia brags, in Aretine, she could do more than all philosophers, astrologers, alychmists, necromancers, witches, and the rest of the crew. As for herbs and philters I could never skill of them. The sole philter I ever used was kissing and embracing, by which alone I made men rave like beasts, stupefied and compelled them to worship me like an idol.189
The means best calculated to produce effects contrary to those just treated of are of several kinds, but such as are derived from hygiene are entitled to be considered as the most powerful. Previously, however, to describing the medicinal substances that may be efficaciously employed in moderating, or rather checking, too violent a propensity to venery, some notice must be taken of the diet adapted to insure such a result.
The use of milk, vegetables, such as lettuce, water-purslain, cucumbers, &c., and especially of fruit in which the acid principle predominates, slackens the movement of the heart and of the sanguineous system; it diminishes the animal heat, the chief source of which is in the activity of the circulation; it produces a feeling of tranquillity and of coolness; the respiration being more slow, occasions the absorption of a less quantity of oxygen, add to which, as a less quantity of reparative materials is contained in this description of aliments, there result a less active nutrition, the loss of embonpoint and the complete prostration of every principle of irritability; in short, it is of all diets the one least capable of furnishing fuel to the passions. For common drink mere water, and, if the impulse of passion should increase, a small quantify of nitre, vinegar, or vitrolic acid, may, occasionally be added to the water to make it more cooling.
Other means conducive to the same end are a laborious life, much bodily exercise, little sleep, and a spare diet, so that the fluids may be more easily conducted to other parts, and that there may not be produced a greater quantity than is requisite for the support of the body. Equally valuable
will be found what Shakespeare recommends—
Should the desire of committing excesses rise to any height, immediate recourse must be had to some serious and mind-absorbing occupation, less nutritious food and drink should be taken, all dishes peculiarly stimulating to the palate avoided, as well as the use of wine and other spirituous liquors.
A cool regimen in every respect was particularly insisted upon by the ancients: hence Plato and Aristotle recommended the custom of going barefoot as a means of checking the stimulus to carnal desire, a suggestion which appears to have been acted upon by some of the monkish orders. The cold bath was considered equally efficacious, while some, among whom may be reckoned Pliny and Galen, advised thin sheets of lead to be worn on the calves of the legs and near the kidneys.
The first and most important of the hygienic means consists in shunning every species of excitement and in having little or no communication with the sex, and the earlier such restraint is imposed, the better. "He that is chaste and continent, not to impair his strength, or terrified by contagion, will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not that virtue until those years when Cato could lend out his wife, and impotent satyrs write satires against lust—but be chaste in thy flaming days, when Alexander dared not trust his eyes upon the fair sisters of Darius, and when so many men think that there is no other way than that of Origen."191 192
The next means is that of carefully abstaining from the perusal of all publications calculated to inflame the passions, by which publications are meant, not obscene books only. With respect to these, indeed, a great error obtains, for the persons most anxious to peruse them are, for the most part, old, worn-out debauchees, men whose generative powers are, comparatively, feeble, if not altogether destroyed, and who, unfortunately for themselves, require this unnatural and detestable kind of stimulus, while, on the contrary, young men and those in middle life, who had not drawn too largely upon their constitution, and for whom the allurements of nature are themselves a sufficient provocative, regard such publications with horror and disgust. It is not, therefore, we repeat, works of this description which we allude to, but those the perusal of which is more dangerous during the period of the passions—novels, more especially such as, under the pretext of describing the working of the human heart, draw the most seducing and inflammatory pictures of illicit love, and throw the veil of sentimental philosophy over the orgies of debauchery and licentiousness. Nothing is more perilous to youth, especially of the female sex, than this description of books. Their style is chaste, not one word is found that can offend the ear, while the mind of the unsuspecting reader is often tainted and corrupted by the most impure ideas and descriptions clothed in the most elegant phraseology. How admirably does Voltaire stigmatise this attention to a mere superficial (if the epitaph be allowed) purity! "Plus," says he "les mœurs sont dépravés, plus les expressions deviennent mésurées: on croit de gagner en langage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu. La pudeur s'est enfuite des cœurs et s'est refugiée sur les lèvres."
There are two kinds of study particularly adapted to preserve the mind and the affections from the assaults of vice and libidinousness. The first of these is the Mathematics, whose efficacy in this respect has been proved by frequent experience. The Venetian lady mentioned by Rousseau in his "Confessions" was not ignorant of this their power, when, seeing the singular effect which her charms had produced upon the, as yet, youthful philosopher, said to him, "Gianetto, lascia le donne e studia la matimatica." "James, give up the ladies, and apply yourself to mathematics." It will, indeed, be found that, in all ages, mathematicians have been but little disposed or addicted to love, and the most celebrated among them, Sir Isaac Newton, is reputed to have lived without ever having had sexual intercourse. The intense mental application required by philosophical abstraction forcibly determines the nervous fluid towards the intellectual organs, and hinders it from being directed towards those of reproduction.
After the study of the Mathematics comes that of Natural History, which will be found to be almost equally beneficial, requiring as it does, the unremitting attention of the student, his perambulation of the open country, and the personal observation of all animated objects.
This peculiar influence of the above-mentioned studies ought particularly to engage the attention of persons who superintend the education of youth; there being no doubt that the effervescence of youthful passions may, to a great extent, be allayed by directing the juvenile mind to either of those studies, according as the constitution exhibits greater or less ardour and precocity. Sometimes, however, there are found idiosyncrasies which bid defiance to remedies of this description, but, nevertheless, yield to the force of medicine: of such, the following is an instance:
"A man, by profession a musician, of an athletic figure and sanguine complexion, with red hair, and a very warm temperament, was so tormented with erotic desires that the venereal act, repeated several times in the course of a few hours, failed to satisfy him. Disgusted with himself, and fearing, as a religious man, the punishment with which concupiscence is threatened in the Gospel, he applied to a medical practitioner, who prescribed bleeding and the use of sedatives and refrigerants, together with a light diet. Having found no relief from this course of treatment, he was then recommended to have recourse to wedlock, and, in consequence, married a robust and healthy young woman, the daughter of a farmer. At first, the change appeared to benefit him, but, in a short time, he tired his wife out by his excessive lubricity, and relapsed into his former satyriasis. His medical friend now recommended frequent fasting, together with prayer, but these also failing of effect, the unhappy man proposed to submit to castration, an operation which was judged to be highly improper, considering the great risks the patient must necessarily incur. The latter, however, still persisted that his wish should be complied with, when, fortunately, a case having occurred in Paris, in which a person afflicted with nephritic pains occasioned by the presence of a calculus, was cured by a preparation of nitre, at the expense, however, of being for ever incapacitated for the pleasures of love, the hint was taken, and doses of nitre dissolved in aqua nymphæ were given, night and morning, during the space of eight days, and with such success that, at the end of that time, he could scarcely satisfy the moderate claims of his wife."193
Some physicians place great confidence in the medicines called refrigerants. The most favourite of these are infusions from the leaves or flowers of the white water-lily (nymphea alba), sorrel, lettuce, perhaps also from mallows, violets, and endive (cichorium), oily seeds, and waters distilled from lettuce, water lily, cucumbers, purslain, and endives. In equal esteem are the syrups of orgeat, lemons, and vinegar, to which may be added cherry-laurel water, when given in proper and gradually-increasing doses. Hemlock, camphor, and agnus-castus, have likewise been much recommended as moderators of the sexual appetite.
According to Pliny,194 the nymphea alba was considered so powerful that these who take it for twelve days successively will then find themselves incapable of propagating their species, and if it be used for forty days, the amorous propensity will be entirely extinguished.
With respect to hemlock, it is too dangerous a medicine to repose confidence in.
The ancients had a high opinion of camphor, a reputation which this drug preserved until, comparatively, a late period, for Scaliger informs that, in the 17th century, monks were compelled to smell and masticate it for the purpose of extinguishing concupiscence; and it was a favourite maxim of the medical school of Salernum195 that—
This fatal property, however, has been denied by modern medical authorities, and apparently with reason, if the fact be true that such workmen as are employed in extracting this useful vegetable product, and who may be said to live constantly in a highly camphorated atmosphere, do not find themselves in the leash degree incapacitated for gratifying the calls of l'amour physique.
There is no doubt, on the other hand, that camphor has been successfully employed in cases of nymphomania, and that several medical writers have asserted its efficacy in neutralising the properties of cantharides, adducing instances which would appear to prove its sedative power: the following one is related by Groenvelt:—196
A young man who had taken a large dose of cantharides in some wine, felt at first, a sort of violent itching, accompanied by great irritation in the bladder, and soon after he suffered greatly from extreme heat, together with an intolerable strangury. Bleeding, emulsions, injections, and opium preparations afforded not the slightest relief. Groenvelt prescribed two scruples of camphor in two boluses. The first dose partly mitigated the pains, and the second one removed them entirely. The remedies which were first administered had, no doubt, weakened the inflammation, and the strangury being no longer kept up by the spasmodic state of the urinary apparatus, camphor sufficed to effect a cure. Burton asserts the value of camphor as an anti-aphrodisiac, and says that when fastened to the parts of generation, or carried in the breeches, it renders the virile member flaccid.
Agnus castus, so called from the down on its surface resembling that upon the skin of a lamb, and from its supposed anti-aphrodisiacal qualities, was in great repute among the Athenians, whose women, during the celebration of the Thesmophoria, or feasts and sacrifices in honour of Ceres or Thesmophoria, the legislatress, abstained for some days from all the pleasures of love, separating themselves entirely for that time from the men. It was also usual with them during the solemnities to strew their beds with agnus castus, fleabane, and other herbs as were supposed to have the power of expelling amorous inclinations. Arnaud de Villeneuve197 exaggerates, almost to a ridiculous degree, the virtue of the agnus castus, asserting as he does, that the surest way to preserve chastity, is to carry about the person, a knife with a handle made of its wood. It was also, and perhaps is still, much used by the monks, who made an emulsion of its seeds steeped in Nenuphar water, and of which they daily drank a portion, wearing at the same time round their loins a girdle made of its branches. Lettuce has also the reputation of being anti-aphrodisiacal. Lobel instances the case of an English nobleman who had long been desirous of having an heir to his estates, but all in vain. Being, however, at length advised to discontinue eating lettuces, of which he was particularly fond, his wishes were gratified by his being blessed with a numerous offspring.
The desire for coition was also supposed to be diminished by drinking a decoction of the pounded leaves of the willow. Vervain, dried coriander, and also mustard, drunk in a fluid state, are also said to prevent the erection of the penis. Alexander Benedictus declares that a topaz having been previously rubbed against the right testicle of a wolf, then steeped in oil or in rose water and worn as a ring, induces a disgust for venereal pleasures, as does also, if we may credit the same sapient physiologist, a powder made of dried frog. The two following prescriptions are also said to be of great efficacy:—
"Da verbena in potu, et non erigitur virga sex diebus. Utere menthâ siccâ cum aceto: genitalia illinita succo hyoscyami aut cicutæ coitûs appetitum sedant."
It has even been asserted that coffee possesses the same property. In the year 1695 it was maintained, in a thesis at the Ecole de Médicine at Paris, that the daily use of coffee deprived both man and woman of the generative power. M. Hecquet198 relates the following anecdote as a proof of such effect:—
A Queen of Persia seeing some grooms using all their efforts to throw a horse upon the ground, enquired the reason of the trouble they were thus taking. Her attendants gave her to understand as delicately as they could, that it was far the purpose of castrating him.
"How unnecessary is so much trouble," said her majesty, "they have only to give him coffee, and their object will be fully and easily attained."199
Most probably the queen spoke from her own experience of its anti-aphrodisiacal effects upon her royal consort.
There are some diseases which are considered as anti-aphrodisiacal, on account of the decided aversion which the patient who is afflicted with them feels for the pleasures of the sexual union. Thus a species of epidemic leprosy is common among the Cossacks of the Jaik, which is attended by pains in the joints and a disgust for copulation, a disgust the more extraordinary, not only because exanthematous diseases, in general excite a desire for the above act, but also inasmuch as this malady, in particular usually attacks persons in the prime of their youth. Another disease analogous to the one just mentioned, the Plica-Polonica, rages, during the autumnal season, in Poland, Lithuania, and Tartary. It is said to have been introduced into the first of these countries by the Tartars, who had it originally from India. One of the most singular phenomena attending this disorder, and which evidently proves the close sympathy existing between the head and the organs of generation, is that when the patient is bald, the Plica not unfrequently fastens upon the sexual parts, and acquires such a length as to descend below the calves of the legs. The made of treatment, that of mercury and sudorifics, proves the mucous character of the disorder, and, consequently, accounts for its well known tendency to strike the whole animal economy with that prostration of strength which produces a total indifference to the sex.
Continual exercise on horseback was considered by Hippocrates200 as anti-aphrodisiacal and Van Sweiten commenting upon that opinion, justly observes that the continual joltings caused by so violent an exercise, added to the compression produced upon the parts of generation by the weight of the body, was by no means unlikely to produce a focal relaxation of those organs to such an extent as to prevent erection altogether.
If whatever opposes an obstacle to the gratification of the sexual appetite may be considered as having a place among the anti-aphrodisiacs, certain mechanical processes may be ranked as such. Of these, fibulation, from the Latin word fibula (a buckle or ring) was the very reverse of circumcision, since the operation consisted in drawing the prepuce over the glans, and preventing its return, by the insertion of the ring.201
The Fibula (buckle) is so called, because it serves to fix together and to re-unite parts which are separated. It was, formerly a surgical instrument which, besides the use now particularly in question, served also to keep closed the lips of any extensive wounds. It is mentioned as being so applied by Oribuse,202 and by Scribonius Largus.203 Employed, therefore, as it was for various uses, the fibula appears to have different shapes, now but little known to us. Rhodius204 has treated of all those mentioned in the writings of antiquity.
Meinsius thinks that the custom of infibulating may be traced back to the time of the siege of Troy, for the singer Demodocus, who was left with Clytemnestra by Agamemnon,205 appears to that critic, to have been a eunuch, or, at least, to here been infibulated.206
Among the ancients, as well as among many modern nations, the laws of chastity and the restraints of honour appeared scarcely sufficient to hinder the sexes from uniting, in spite of all the obstacles opposed by a vigilant watch and strict seclusion.207 Indeed, what Roman virgin could entertain very strict ideas of modesty while she saw the goddess of love honoured in the temple, or the amours of Venus and Mars celebrated, while the poor cuckolded Vulcan, after seizing the amorous couple in his net, way only thereby exposed to the ridicule of the Olympic Divinities. There can be little doubt but that excess of this description bastardized and corrupted the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that recourse was necessarily had to the fibula when the deities themselves set the example. Of what use, indeed, could be the moral lessons of a Plato or a Socrates, even when enforced by infibulation, if vice was thus sanctioned by divine example? The only aim of such a state of things was to vanquish obstacles. The art of eluding nature was studied, marriage was despised, notwithstanding the edicts of Augustus against bachelors; the depopulated republic wallowed in the most abandoned lust, and, as a natural consequence, the individual members of it became corrupted and enervated from their very infancy.
The infibulation of boys, sometimes on account of their voice, and not unfrequently, to prevent masturbation, was performed by having the prepuce drawn over the glans; it was then pierced, and a thick thread was passed through it, remaining there until the cicatrizing of the hole; when that took place, a rather large ring was then substituted, which was not removed but with the permission of the party ordering the operation.208 The Romans infibulated their singers in order to preserve their voice:
They even subjected to the same operation most of their actors:
"Tell me, clasp! frankly, of what advantage are you to actresses and lute-players? To enhance their favours."
"Una si gran fibula copre il membro di Menofila, che sola basterebbe a tutti i commenianti. Io O Flacco, avevo creduto (imperocche si siamo sovente lavati insiême) che esso sollecito avesse cura delle sua voce; lotta in mezzo la palestra a vista del popolo, la fibula cascó sventvrato; era un' inciso."
Nor were dancers and gladiators exempted from the same operation, especially the latter, in order that they might preserve all the vigour required in their horrible and degrading occupation.
The best description of the fibula is that given by Holiday: "The fibula," says he, "does not strictly signifie a button, but also a buckle or clasp, or such like stay. In this place, the poet expresses by it the instrument of servilitie applied to those that were employed to sing upon the stage; the Prætor who set forth playes for the delight of the people, buying youths for that purpose, and that they might not, by lust, spoil their voice, their overseers closed their shame with a case of metal having a sharp spike of the same metal passing by the side of it, and sometimes used one of another form; or by a nearer crueltie, they thrust a brazen or silver wire thought that part which the Jew did lose in circumcision.
"The form of the first, and also another fashion, the curious reader may here see (being without any immodestie) as they are represented by Pignerius, de servis, p. 82. But whatsoever the fashion or invention was, the trust was but fond that was committed to them, seeing that the art of lust and gold could make them as vain as the Italian engines of jealousy in this day. Thus, 'O Lentulus,' says the poet, speaking figuratively to some nobleman, 'it is that thou art married; but it is some musician's or fencer's bastard that is born under thy lordly canopie.'"213
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PHALLIC FIBULÆ. |
Winkleman furnishes us with a description of an infibulated musician,214 it being a small bronze statue representing a naked deformed individual, as thin as a skeleton, and carrying a ring in his enormi mentula. Martial, who laughs at everything, speaks of these singers sometimes breaking their ring, and says that it becomes necessary to send them to the fibula-makers in order to have the damage repaired:215
The practice of infibulation was very common in India, from religious motives. As a proof of their sanctity, many of the Santons, or Mohammedan saints, as well as other devout persons, bonzes, fakirs, and the like, devoted themselves to perpetual virginity. Whether it was with the intention of placing themselves beyond the possibility of breaking their vow, or of giving evidence of their constancy, certain it is that they loaded their prepuce with an enormous fibula, or ring; and, in their warm climate, where nudity does not shock ideas of propriety or decency, devout women not unfrequently repaired to these soi-disant saints, to admire and venerate such efforts of virtue and self-denial; they are even reported to have knelt down, and, in that humiliating posture, to have kissed the preputial ring, no doubt with the vain hope of thereby obtaining indulgences. In some places, these martyrs fasten their fibula with a lock, the key which they deposit with the magistrate of the town or village. But, nature insisting upon her rights, is often too strong for this self-violence, nor can desire, or the not-to-be-mistaken symptom of it, be opposed, or even prevented, from being gratified; and since the lock, which obstructs the extremity of the prepuce only, cannot hinder a kind of erection, nor, indeed, of effusion of the seminal fluid, it cannot do more than oppose the introduction of the male organ into the receptacle destined for it.
Another description of fakirs were formerly to be seen in India, and, especially, in its southern peninsula, whose custom it was to traverse the country in a state of nudity, and who had been rendered impotent by the following regimen. The children destined for this penitential state are taken away from their parents at the age of six or seven years, and made to eat, daily, a quantity of the young leaves of a tree called Mairkousie. At first, the dose given them is not larger than a filbert. This regimen must be persisted in until the party reaches the age of five-and-twenty years, the dose being increased till, at the maximum, it is as large as a duck's egg. During all this time, the devotee is subjected to no other regimen, except a light purge, once in six months, by means of Kadoukaie, or the black mirobolan. Although rendered completely impotent by this mode of treatment, so far from their physical strength and beauty of form being diminished or deteriorated thereby, they are, on the contrary, improved by it; the enjoyment of constant good health is likewise almost an invariable consequence.
Infibulation is not confined to the male sex exclusively, for it is practised on girls and women in India, Persia, and the East, generally, and most commonly consists in joining together the female sexual organ, or closing the labia of the vagina by a suture made with waxed thread, a small aperture being left for the egress of the urine and the menstrua.
Linschet witnessed the operation at Pegu, as did also Schultz, Brown saw it performed, at Darfour, on females from eleven to twelve years of age.216 At the time of marriage, a cut of the bistouri dissevers the parts which have been closed by the effects of the suture. Sometimes jealousy contents itself by passing a ring through the parts. Women, as well as girls, are subjected to this disgusting operation, the only difference being that the ring of the latter cannot be removed, while that of the former has a kind of lock, the key of which is in the husband's possession. Pallas informs us that the beautiful nation of the Tcherkesses, or Circassians carefully preserve the virginity of their girls by means of a leathern girdle, or rather corslet made of skin, and sewn immediately upon the naked body. The husband alone has the right of severing this corslet, which he does, on the nuptial night.
When the violation of virgin chastity and conjugal fidelity became more frequent, fathers and husbands had recourse, even in Europe, to a mechanical contrivance for the purpose of preserving intact the honour of the family. This was a kind of padlock, which shut up all access to the seat of voluptuousness. The invention is attributed to one Francesco di Carrera, an imperial judge of Padua, who lived about the close of the 15th century. The machine itself was called the Girdle of Chastity. Francesco's acts of cruelty brought him to the scaffold, where he was strangled in 1405, by a decree of the Senate of Venice. One of the principal accusations brought against him was the employment of the Girdle of Chastity, for his mistresses, and it is said by Misson217 that a box filled with these articles was for a long time preserved in the palace of St. Mark, at Venice. Rabelais speaks of these girdles, which he calls Ceintures á la Bergamasque, "Nay," says he, Pantagruel, "may that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his eye, carry me quiet away with him, if, in that case, whenever I go abroad from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country, to keep them from being saillied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamesco lock upon my wife." Brantome has the following notice of these chastity preservers. "Des temps du roi Henri il yeut un certain Quinquallier qui apporte une douzaine de certains engins à la foire de St. Germain pour brider le cas des femmes. Ces sortes de cadenas estoient en usage à Venise dès devant l'année 1522, estoient faites de fer et centuroient comme une ceinture, et venoient à se prendre par le bas, et se fermer à clef, si subtilement faites, qu'il n'estoit pas possible que la femme en estant bridée und fois, s'en peust jamais prévaloir pour ce doux plaisir, n'ayant que quelques petits trous menus pour servir à pisser."218
An endeavour was made to introduce these Bernasco padlocks into France during the reign of Henry II., and a shop was opened by an Italian at the fair of St. Germain, where they were publicly sold, and in such numbers, that the French gallants, becoming alarmed, threatened to throw the vendor into the Seine, if he did not pack up his merchandise and decamp, which he immediately did for fear that the menace might be put in execution.
Voltaire describes the Cadenas as originating with Pluto, who, jealous of his wife Proserpine, was advised:
We shall close this our third essay with the amusing summary of anti-aphrodisiacal remedies, as given by Rabelais.