Anise, which flourishes in the Eastern Mediterranean region, is used at the present time for gastronomic purposes. But it was also reputed to increase amatory excitation.
In the cyclic search for erotic reinforcements, the most horrific ingredients and means have been utilized. Even the human body. One medieval compound, for instance, consisted of the flesh of a human corpse, in a putrefied condition, along with ovaries and testes, both human and animal, soaked in alcohol.
The Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, Les 120 Journées de Sodome, and other novels dealing with sexual orgies and perversions, presents a character called Minski, a giant, who is himself anthropophagous and who eulogizes the consumption of human flesh, dwelling with inhuman relish on the texture, the taste, the continuous appeal of the human body in a sexual sense:
Minski’s potency is such that, at the age of forty-five, his faculty for lubricity is able to induce in one evening ten manifestations. He admits that this physiological energy is largely due to the quantity of human flesh that he consumes. He advises this same regimen to those who would like to triple their capacity, apart from the strength and health and vigor that he will acquire through this diet. Once human flesh is tasted, one will disdain all other foods. No animal meat, no fish can compare with human flesh. Once the initial repugnance is overcome, one can never have enough of it.
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.