It is curious to discover that sensual and sexual voluptuousness and amorous contests, whether accepted according to traditional principles or forbidden and experienced secretly, could find a vociferous, articulate opponent. Yet in 1599 such an attack on loose morality and licentious freedom was published under the title of Antidote for Love, with a lengthy Discourse on the Nature and Causes thereof, together with the most singular Remedies for the Prevention and Cure of Amorous Passions. The author was a Frenchman, a certain Dr. Jean Aubery.
To stimulate genital vigor, the French in the Middle Ages advocated, as a complement to physiological activity, verbal love making. Oral caresses, endearing diminutives, the poetic battery of language that was so familiar to the ancient poets, to Alciphron and Theocritus, to Plautus, to Catullus, to Horace, came into popular use again. One chronicler devotes himself to some extent to this phase of amorous conquest. He recommends erotic murmurings, whisperings, coaxings, endearments. And without question such recommendations were generally reinforced with anatomical and sexual terms, obscene and scatological references, that strengthened the lascivious gestures and contortions of the participants. Similarly, in Spain and in Italy perfumes began to acquire their amatory appeal and value, and added their subtle allurements and insinuations to a potion, or to an erotic phial.
Le Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal was a kind of amatory encyclopedia, first published in 1696. The author was a Frenchman, a Dr. Nicolas Venette. In addition to a great deal of matter on amatory subjects, the effects of excesses, the causes of the validity of marriage, continence and debauchery, there were also discussions on physiological conditions, sexual relations, theories on the humors, on male and female temperaments and peculiarities.
In respect of stimulants, Dr. Venette recommended, among other arousing potions, crocodile kidneys. These were to be dried, then pounded into a powder, to which was added sweet wine. The result, according to Dr. Venette, was amazingly effective.
In eighteenth century France, la vie galante had grown to such proportions socially that many clubs were established, devoted exclusively and fantastically to licentious erotic practices, to the dissemination of amatory gossip and tales of well-known personalities, prominent in contemporary life, who were addicted, orgiastically and with abandonment, to amorous mores. There were even publications that published spicy titbits about such characters, without disguise of name or circumstance.