The root of this herb put upon the neck healeth the swine pockes, apostumus behinde the eares, and botches of the neck, and such as cannot keepe their water. It healeth cuts also, and swelling of the evil, or fundament, proceeding of an inflammation which groweth in the fundament.
It is also of great strength in veneriall pastimes. If any man put it into his house or vineyard, or in the ground, he shal have great store of increase.
Another love charm, from Albertus Magnus’ Book of the Marvels of the World, is designed to stabilize a woman’s affection:
If thou wilt that a woman bee not visious nor desire men, take the private members of a Woolfe, and the haires which doe grow on the cheekes or eyebrowes of him, and the haires which bee under his beard, and burne it all, and give it to her to drinke, when she knoweth not, and she shal desire no other man.
Macrobius, a Roman writer who flourished c. 400 A.D., is the author of a symposium entitled Saturnalia, in which he states that hot drinks, particularly wine, are provocative of amatory exercise: deinde omnia calida Venerem provocant et semen excitant et generationi favent. Hausto autem mero plurimo fiunt viri ad coitum pigriores. That is, a long draught of unmixed wine is a decided stimulant to genesiac activity. On the other hand, like many of the ancient erotic poets, Macrobius adds that excessive and cold wine is a deterrent: vini nimietas ut frigidi facit semen exile vel debile.
The plant verbena officinalis was known to Hippocrates and later on to Pliny the Elder as an effective means of inducing virile potency.