In the case of highly responsive natures, a mere inhalation of a particular perfume, or the sight of a desired person, may produce extreme erotic symptoms. This was so with Antiochus, son of King Seleucus, who reigned in the third century B.C. Merely hearing the name of his mistress uttered aloud was sufficient to induce in him the ultimate amatory reactions.
The amatory urge has been, in the history of man, of such forceful and uninterrupted universality that, in special cases and in specific areas of activity, there have been devised anti-aphrodisiac means, formal prescriptions, herbal and other concoctions, and well-meant counsel. Verbena in a drink was formerly recommended as a specific preventive. Also dried mint and vinegar and the juice of hemlock. Cucumbers, too, and water melon have at various times been considered effective in diminishing or allaying sensual interests. In a general sense, whatever exhausts the body physiologically or mentally has been considered as a feasible amatory restriction. In this category are included laborious and persistent work that occupies all the waking energies: a minimum of sleep, or fasting, or a restricted diet, or exercise of the body: even castigation.
The problem was equally well known to the ancients, who advised, to counteract the heat engendered by passionate excitation, a prescription involving cold. Hence the cold bath was a common and recognized procedure and was adopted, centuries later, as a regular feature in Anglo-Saxon mores. Other Greeks, among them the philosophers Plato and his successor Aristotle, suggested that going barefoot would diminish the heat-producing physiological desire. Another suggestion was to wear sheets of lead, beaten out thin, near the kidneys or on the legs. Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist and author of the monumental Historia Naturalis, and the eminent Greek physician Galen, both coincided in this view.
A more difficult procedure, but one commended by the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne, was self-restraint in the ‘flaming days,’ as he calls them. Otherwise, there remains one other remedy, that was adopted by Origen, the third century A.D. Father of the Church. He cut the Gordian knot, freeing himself from all carnal inducements: Seeds genitalibus membris, eunuchum se facit.
Ingenious inventions, activities, devices for escaping from or suppressing compulsive amatory inclinations have been proposed in every age, from the arch poet of love Ovid himself to the knowledgeable Dr. Nicolas Venette.
Shun idleness, for idleness tends to amatory thoughts, warns the erotological poet. Be active, and you will not be endangered. Occupy yourself constantly: with agricultural pursuits, or fishing, or hunting. Or even take up the study of law.
Avoid food that tends to stimulate: and, in general, live an ascetic life removed from crowds, from visual provocations, from social parties and clamorous public spectacles and dramatic performances, from pictorial or sculptural objects that induce amatory images.
Snuff taking is suggested, as well as concentrated mental study, in later centuries. Or drink a concoction of the roots and seeds of the water lily. That is soothing and cooling, as the Turks seemed to have found it.
Aromatic herbs were, in ancient Rome, usually a preliminary to more active amatory adventures. The osphresiological sensitivity of men and women is such that in many cases particular aromas, strong unguents and cosmetics, arouse venereal impulses. In perverted and aberrational situations, in fact, even repellent but powerful effluvia and vapors, corporeal and genital, may create or induce erotic susceptibility. The Oriental manuals of erotology and certain anthropological studies confirm this view.