It must be remembered that the early history of this subject is more or less inextricably commingled with folk-lore practices of magical origin, not necessarily founded on actual observation of the physiological effects of consuming the semen or testes. Thus, according to W. H. Pearse (Scalpel, December, 1897), it is the custom in Cornwall for country maids to eat the testicles of the young male lambs when they are castrated in the spring, the survival, probably, of a very ancient religious cult. (I have not myself been able to hear of this custom in Cornwall.) In Burchard's Penitential (Cap. CLIV, Wasserschleben, op. cit., p. 660) seven years' penance is assigned to the woman who swallows her husband's semen to make him love her more. In the seventeenth century (as shown in William Salmon's London Dispensatory, 1678) semen was still considered to be good against witchcraft and also valuable as a love-philter, in which latter capacity its use still survives. (Bourke, Scatalogic Rites, pp. 343, 355.) In an earlier age (Picart, quoted by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 109) the Manichæans, it is said, sprinkled their eucharistic bread with human semen, a custom followed by the Albigenses.
The belief, perhaps founded in experience, that semen possesses medical and stimulant virtues was doubtless fortified by the ancient opinion that the spinal cord is the source of this fluid. This was not only held by the highest medical authorities in Greece, but also in India and Persia.
The semen is thus a natural stimulant, a physiological aphrodisiac, the type of a class of drugs which have been known and cultivated in all parts of the world from time immemorial. (Dufour has discussed the aphrodisiacs used in ancient Rome, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. II, ch. 21.) It would be vain to attempt to enumerate all the foods and medicaments to which has been ascribed an influence in heightening the sexual impulse. (Thus, in the sixteenth century, aphrodisiacal virtues were attributed to an immense variety of foods by Liébault in his Thresor des Remèdes Secrets pour les Maladies des Femmes, 1585, pp. 104, et seq.) A large number of them certainly have no such effect at all, but have obtained this credit either on some magical ground or from a mistaken association. Thus the potato, when first introduced from America, had the reputation of being a powerful aphrodisiac, and the Elizabethan dramatists contain many references to this supposed virtue. As we know, potatoes, even when taken in the largest doses, have not the slightest aphrodisiac effect, and the Irish peasantry, whose diet consists very largely of potatoes, are even regarded as possessing an unusually small measure of sexual feeling. It is probable that the mistake arose from the fact that potatoes were originally a luxury, and luxuries frequently tend to be regarded as aphrodisiacs, since they are consumed under circumstances which tend to arouse the sexual desires. It is possible also that, as has been plausibly suggested, the misunderstanding may have been due to sailors—the first to be familiar with the potato—who attributed to this particular element of their diet ashore the generally stimulating qualities of their life in port. The eryngo (Eryngium maritimum), or sea holly, which also had an erotic reputation in Elizabethan times, may well have acquired it in the same way. Many other vegetables have a similar reputation, which they still retain. Thus onions are regarded as aphrodisiacal, and were so regarded by the Greeks, as we learn from Aristophanes. It is noteworthy that Marro, a reliable observer, has found that in Italy, both in prisons and asylums, lascivious people are fond of onions (La Pubertà, p. 297), and it may perhaps be worth while to recall the observation of Sérieux that in a woman in whom the sexual instinct only awoke in middle age there was a horror of leeks. In some countries, and especially in Belgium, celery is popularly looked upon as a sexual stimulant. Various condiments, again, have the same reputation, perhaps because they are hot and because sexual desire is regarded, rightly enough, as a kind of heat. Fish—skate, for instance, and notably oysters and other shellfish—are very widely regarded as aphrodisiacs, and Kisch attributes this property to caviar. It is probable that all these and other foods which have obtained this reputation, in so far as they have any action whatever on the sexual appetite, only possess it by virtue of their generally nutritious and stimulating qualities, and not by the presence of any special principle having a selective action on the sexual sphere. A beefsteak is probably as powerful a sexual stimulant as any food; a nutritious food, however, which is at the same time easily digestible, and thus requiring less expenditure of energy for its absorption, may well exert a specially rapid and conspicuous stimulant effect. But it is not possible to draw a line, and, as Aquinas long since said, if we wish to maintain ourselves in a state of purity we shall fear even an immoderate use of bread and water.
More definitely aphrodisiacal effects are produced by drugs, and especially by drugs which in large doses are poisons. The aphrodisiac with the widest popular reputation is cantharides, but its sexually exciting effects are merely an accidental result of its action in causing inflammation of the genito-urinary passage, and it is both an uncertain and a dangerous result, except in skillful hands and when administered in small doses. Nux vomica (with its alkaloid strychnia), by virtue of its special action on the spinal cord, has a notably pronounced effect in heightening the irritability of the spinal ejaculatory center, though it by no means necessarily exerts any strengthening influence. Alcohol exerts a sexually exciting effect, but in a different manner; it produces little stimulation of the cord and, indeed, even paralyzes the lumbar sexual center in large doses, but it has an influence on the peripheral nerve-endings and on the skin, and also on the cerebral centers, tending to arouse desire and to diminish inhibition. In this latter way, as Adler remarks, it may, in small doses, under some circumstances, be beneficial in men with an excessive nervousness or dread of coitus, and women, in whom orgasm has been difficult to reach, have frequently found this facilitated by some previous indulgence in alcohol. The aphrodisiac effect of alcohol seems specially marked on women. But against the use of alcohol as an aphrodisiac it must be remembered that it is far from being a tonic to detumescence, at all events in men, and that there is much evidence tending to show that not only chronic alcoholism, but even procreation during intoxication is perilous to the offspring (see, e.g., Andriezen, Journal of Mental Science, January, 1905, and cf. W. C. Sullivan, "Alcoholism and Suicidal Impulses," ib., April, 1898, p. 268); it may be added that Bunge has found a very high proportion of cases of immoderate use of alcohol in the fathers of women unable to suckle their infants (G. von Bunge, Die Zunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu Stillen, 1903) while even an approximation to the drunken state is far from being a desirable prelude to the creation of a new human being. It is obvious that those who wish, for any reason, to cultivate a strict chastity of thought and feeling would do well to avoid alcohol altogether, or only in its lightest forms and in moderation. The aphrodisiacal effects of wine have long been known; Ovid refers to them (e.g., Ars Am., Bk. III, 765). Clement of Alexandria, who was something of a man of science as well as a Christian moralist, points out the influence of wine in producing lasciviousness and sexual precocity. (Pædagogus, Bk. II, Chapter II). Chaucer makes the Wife of Bath say in the Wife of Bath's Prologue:—
"And, after wyn, on Venus moste [needs] I thinke:
For al so siken as cold engendreth hayl,
A likerous mouth moste have a likerous tayl,
In womman vinolent is no defense,
This knowen lechours by experience."
Alcohol, as Chaucer pointed out, comes to the aid of the man, who is unscrupulous in his efforts to overcome a woman, and this not merely by virtue of its aphrodisiacal effects, and the apparently special influence which it seems to exert on women, but also because it lulls the mental and emotional characteristics which are the guardians of personality. A correspondent who has questioned on this point a number of prostitutes he has known, writes: "Their accounts of the first fall were nearly always the same. They got to know a 'gentleman,' and on one occasion they drank too much; before they quite realized what was happening they were no longer virgins." "In the mental areas, under the influence of alcohol," Schmiedeberg remarks (in his Elements of Pharmacology), "the finer degrees of observation, judgment, and reflection are the first to disappear, while the remaining mental functions remain in a normal condition. The soldier acts more boldly because he notices dangers less and reflects over them less; the orator does not allow himself to be influenced by any disturbing side-considerations as to his audience, hence he speaks more freely and spiritedly; self-consciousness is lost to a very great extent, and many are astounded at the ease with which they can express their thoughts, and at the acuteness of their judgment in matters which, when they are perfectly sober, with difficulty reach their minds; and then afterwards they are ashamed at their mistakes."
The action of opium in small doses is also to some extent aphrodisiacal; it slightly stimulates both the brain and the spinal cord, and has sensory effects on the skin like alcohol; these effects are favored by the state of agreeable dreaminess it produces. In the seventeenth century Venette (La Génération de l'Homme, Part II, Chapter V) strongly recommended small doses of opium, then little known, for this purpose; he had himself, he says, in illness experienced its joys, "a shadow of those of heaven." In India opium (as well as cannabis indica) has long been a not uncommon aphrodisiac; it is specially used to diminish local sensibility, delaying the orgasm and thus prolonging the sexual act. (W. D. Sutherland, "De Impotentia," Indian Medical Gazette, January, 1900). Its more direct and stimulating influence on the sexual emotions seems indicated by the statement that prostitutes are found standing outside the opium-smoking dens of Bombay, but not outside the neighboring liquor shops. (G. C. Lucas, Lancet, February 2, 1884.) Like alcohol, opium seems to have a marked aphrodisiacal effect on women. The case is recorded of a mentally deranged girl, with no nymphomania though she masturbated, who on taking small doses of opium at once showed signs of nymphomania, following men about, etc. (American Journal Obstetrics, May, 1901, p. 74.) It may well be believed that opium acts beneficially in men when the ejaculatory centers are weak but irritable; but its actions are too widespread over the organism to make it in any degree a valuable aphrodisiac. Various other drugs have more or less reputation as aphrodisiacs; thus bromide of gold, a nervous and glandular stimulant, is said to have as one of its effects a heightening of sexual feeling. Yohimbin, an alkaloid derived from the West African Yohimbehe tree, has obtained considerable repute during recent years in the treatment of impotence; in some cases (see, e.g., Toff's results, summarized in British Medical Journal, February 18, 1905) it has produced good results, apparently by increasing the blood supply to the sexual organs, but has not been successful in all cases or in all hands. It must always be remembered that in cases of psychical impotence suggestion necessarily exerts a beneficial influence, and this may work through any drug or merely with the aid of bread pills. All exercise, often even walking, may be a sexual stimulant, and it is scarcely necessary to add that powerful stimulation of the skin in the sexual sphere, and more especially of the nates, is often a more effective aphrodisiac than any drug, whether the irritation is purely mechanical, as by flogging, or mechanico-chemical, as by urtication or the application of nettles. Among the Malays (with whom both men and women often use a variety of plants as aphrodisiacs, according to Vaughan Stevens) Breitenstein states (21 Jahre in India, Theil I, p. 228) that both massage and gymnastics are used to increase sexual powers. The local application of electricity is one of the most powerful of aphrodisiacs, and McMordie found on applying one pole to a uterine sound in the uterus and the other to the abdominal wall that in the majority of healthy women the orgasm occurred.
Among anaphrodisiacs, or sexual sedatives, bromide of potassium, by virtue of its antidotal relationship to strychnia, is one of the drugs whose action is most definite, though, while it dulls sexual desire, it also dulls all the nervous and cerebral activities. Camphor has an ancient reputation as an anaphrodisiac, and its use in this respect was known to the Arabs (as may be seen by a reference to it in the Perfumed Garden), while, as Hyrtl mentions (loc. cit. ii, p. 94), rue (Ruta graveolens) was considered a sexual sedative by the monks of old, who on this account assiduously cultivated it in their cloister gardens to make vinum rutæ. Recently heroin in large doses (see, e.g., Becker, Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, November 23, 1903) has been found to have a useful effect in this direction. It may be doubted, however, whether there is any satisfactory and reliable anaphrodisiac. Charcot, indeed, it is said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had any confidence was that used by the uncle of Heloïse in the case of Abelard. "Cela (he would add with a grim smile) tranche la difficulte."
If semen is a stimulant when ingested, it is easy to suppose that it may exert a similar action on the woman who receives it into the vagina in normal sexual congress. It is by no means improbable that, as Mattei argued in 1878, this is actually the case. It is known that the vagina possesses considerable absorptive power. Thus Coen and Levi, among others, have shown that if a tampon soaked in a solution of iodine is introduced into the vagina, iodine will be found in the urine within an hour. And the same is true of various other substances.[[137]] If the vagina absorbs drugs it probably absorbs semen. Toff, of Braila (Roumania), who attaches much importance to such absorption, considers that it must be analogous to the ingestion of organic extractives. It is due to this influence, he believes, that weak and anæmic girls so often become full-blooded and robust after marriage, and lose their nervous tendencies and shyness.[[138]]
It is, however, most certainly a mistake to suppose that the beneficial influence of coitus on women is exclusively, or even mainly, dependent upon the absorption of semen. This is conclusively demonstrated by the fact that such beneficial influence is exerted, and in full measure, even when all precautions have been taken to avoid any contact with the semen. In so far as coitus reservatus or interruptus may lead to haste or discomfort which prevents satisfactory orgasm on the part of the woman, it is without doubt a cause of defective detumescence and incomplete satisfaction. But if orgasm is complete the beneficial effects of coitus follow even if there has been no possibility of the absorption of semen. Even after coitus interruptus, if it can be prolonged for a period long enough for the woman to attain full and complete satisfaction, she is enabled to experience what she may describe as a feeling of intoxication, lasting for several hours. It is in the action of the orgasm itself, and the vascular, secretory, and metabolic activities set up by the psychic and nervous influence of coitus with a beloved person, that we must seek the chief key to the effects produced by coitus on women, however these effects may possibly be still further heightened by the actual absorption of semen.[[139]]