In a novel by John Brophy entitled Windfall, and published in London in 1951, the hero arrives in New York, where he is confronted with the fact that the drive for erotic aids is as urgent as ever:
It was true: where Broadway converged on, before it crossed, the undeviating straightness of Sixth Avenue, the wide double roadway was surrounded by theatres, cinemas, hotels and restaurants and newspaper offices, indiscernible behind huge, colored, epileptically moving signs advocating, pictorially or by blunt lettered exhortation, whiskies and pea-nuts, cigarettes, motor-cars, night-clubs, patent medicines and proprietary brands of sexual stimulants.
In the same novel there is a description of a New York Night Club, the Freudian Frolics. Here are presented amatory stimulants and visual and palpable inducements in a contemporary setting, basically identical with the Aristophanic performances, the satires of Lucian, the sketches of Alciphron and the more boisterous narratives of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and, dominantly, eighteenth century France. The scene is introduced with a generalization that marks the activities of the place:
Beyond the swing-doors almost every erotic taste not utterly perverted could be if not gratified at least stimulated ... the majority made straight for the primary erotogenic zones.
Again, there is a wildly farcical description of amatory reinforcements. The character concerned is a degenerate multi-millionaire, an American named Mirabel Jones XVIII. His problem is to achieve an heir to his vast interests. For this purpose, he is undergoing a multiple variety of treatments at the hands of his physician and his psychiatrist. He is subjected to daily injections. He consumes all sorts of tablets. He is regulated by calisthenic exercises, by vitamin pills, by radio-therapy, by baths. All these various means are regimented methodically into prospective erotic channels. As a climax, he travels constantly, from one country to another, to secure a climate favorable to his condition, from South America to California to England.
The possibilities of the love-potion still intrude into modern times. In a series of light sketches of Scottish life, entitled Christina, the author, J. J. Bell, presents young Christina herself, who is living with an aunt who runs a small village store. To further a possible courtship between the aunt and the commercial traveler Mr. Baldwin, Christina conceives a plan to help the shy and hesitant Miss Purvis. The book itself was published about forty years ago:
Christina greatly enjoyed looking at the shops without supervision or restriction. She had made up her mind to purchase a gift for her aunt, whose birthday fell about a month later.