In medieval Spain, in the thirteenth century, a certain Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, published a book entitled Book of Good Love. Good love, that is, buen amor, is spiritual love, divine love. Loco amor is the frenzied, carnal love of women that St. Thomas Aquinas terms amor naturalis.
Ruiz, familiar with the concept and practices of both types of love, refers to the large body of erotic stimulants, that the Arabs introduced into Europe. Among such potions and aphrodisiacs were: citrus fruits, ginger, cloves, cummin seeds, and carrots.
The actual composition of love-potions and analogous amatory fortifiers is not known in each case in specific detail. Erotologists, historians of ethnic mores, chroniclers, authors of amatory manuals, and writers on similar topics make frequent casual references to the fact of the potion itself, with the implication that the individual ingredients, their relationship to each other, the sources of supply, and the method of compounding them into one medicament are either so well established in public knowledge as to dispense with the enumeration of the component elements, or are merely in the nature of traditional information, transmitted to the reader without further comment, without the personal or necessary intrusion of the writer.
Despite such strictures, however, there remains a sufficiently substantial corpus of knowledge relative both to the potion as such and to the elements of such a compound elixir.
An immediate, rational, and fundamental explanation of the dearth of details about the potion is that the draught had a high economic value. The possessor of the mysterious ingredients collected and compounded and distilled for monetary gain. The selling of potions was a lucrative business: in the Middle Ages it was a flourishing industry, an indispensable production. And thus it was to the extreme advantage of the dispenser of the amatory cup to guard and retain the secret recipes with the most scrupulous care.
Perfumes and spices and aromatic roots were often included in the composition of philtres, to give a particular fragrance to the unguent or medicament. This was usually the case among the Romans, who often, in large and luxurious families, had special laboratories where the essences were distilled. These essences contained, among other ingredients, myrrh, cinnamon, marjoram, or spikenard.
Some philtres consisted of testicular and related matter, as: the sperm of deer and other animals, and even menstrual blood. The belief was that an intimate causal relationship existed between the elements of the philtre and the anticipated sexual implications.