_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.
Among such clubs were La Société Joyeuse, Les Sunamites, La Paroisse, and Les Aphrodites. One group, called Les Restauratrices, used the methods and manipulations and stimulating potions and drugs that are so vividly described in Petronius’ Roman novel of the _Satyricon_. It was evident, then, that Les Restauratrices served men who had degenerated physiologically through age or extreme excesses.
These clubs recognized no amatory restraints whatever. They indulged in invented, ingenious permutations of amorous exercises, both privately and publicly, and even held competitions to decide the superior potency of members. The frequenters were ranked, in regard to prestige and distinction, according to the numerical extent of their encounters.
Birds and game were commonly used in amatory tonics. The medieval grimoires and manuals are packed with references to preparations that involve all parts of the bird as ingredients for erotic compounds. The philosopher and occultist Albertus Magnus, as an instance, who wrote on a vast number of allied subjects, prescribes, in one of his treatises, the brains of partridge, calcined into powder form, and steeped in red wine, as a prospective aid to vigor.