Another plant, botanically known as melampryum pratense and commonly called cow wheat, was given as fodder to cows. But it had also a reputation, according to Pliny the Elder and the Greek physician Dioscorides, as a rousing stimulus of passion.
The dried seeds of the Cola Nitida, a nut indigenous to Africa, furnishes a drink called cola. This beverage is also known as bichy. The cola nut itself, which is chewed, is credited, among the Africans, with promoting vigor.
A brew compounded of the Indian root called galanga, and cardamoms, laurel seeds, sparrow wort, nutmeg, cubebs, cloves, in a fowl or pigeon broth, was held to be a powerful stimulant, especially among Arabs.
Women esteemed, as an amatory incitement, the brains of the mustela piscis.
To a plant with a root shaped like a claw, called lycopodium, was formerly attributed the quality of inducing desire.
In Eastern countries, the fruit of the mastic-tree, pounded with oil and honey, makes a drink that is highly esteemed among Arabs as a venereal provocation.
The Arab erotologist Umar ibn Muhammed al-Nefzawi, author of _The Perfumed Garden_, a survey in amatory practices, discusses the entire range of erotic experiences and procedures among men and women. He treats of genital conditions, medical problems, potions, sexual ceremonials, circumstances favorable to amatory consummations, manipulations and contrivances and preparations that affect amatory potentialities. With all this mass of detail and particularization of venereal topics, the author emphasizes that his work is not an exposition directed toward lewd and libidinous ends, but a virtual glorification of the gifts bestowed upon men by divine graciousness and indulgent beneficence.
Plutarch, the Greek historian and philosopher, in his _De Sanitate Tuenda Praecepta_, Advice on Keeping Well, tells of an amatory incident:
When the young men described by Menander were, as they were drinking, insidiously beset by the pimp, who introduced some handsome and high-priced concubines, each one of them (as he says),
Bent down his head and munched his own dessert, being on his guard and afraid to look at them.
The inventive genius of man has included in the preparation of love philtres the most heterogeneous items, such as: human fingers, hoopee brains, tobacco, human excrement, snake bones, toads, skulls and intestinal fluids and organs. Horace and Catullus, Pliny the Elder and Apuleius, among the Romans, have frequent occasion to refer to philtres and their ingredients and effects.