The Orient is always prepared to experiment with strange objects, unique devices, complicated contraptions, protracted and difficult treatments, all for the ultimate purpose of recovering the libido, or protracting the amatory span, or maintaining full and effectual vigor.
Take, for instance, a man’s molar tooth: and the bone of a lapwing’s left wing. Place in a purse, under the woman’s pillow. Tell her of your action. The result, presumably by means of the implied sympathetic magic, will be very favorable.
A plant belonging in the satyrion species, called Orchis Morio, that is native to the South East of Europe, particularly in the area near Istanbul, is used in Turkey as an excitant.
The juice of the roots of the mandayantaka plant, the clitoria ternateea, the anjanika plant, the shlakshnaparni plant and the yellow amaranth, compounded into a lotion, constituted an Oriental invigorating recipe.
Among the Japanese, a root highly esteemed for its amatory potential is ninjin, which has properties analogous to those of the mandrake.
The Chinese are fond of a sauce called nuoc-man. Spiced with garlic and pimento, this fish extract, similar to the Roman garum, is treated as a stimulant, containing, as it does, genesiac elements: salt and phosphorus.
As the West inherited and absorbed many cultural phases, views, concepts, practices, mores from the East, it likewise acquired some of the amatory and medicinal knowledge relating to electuaries and healing methods, herbs and plants that might be contributory to health and well-being, and, as an antique encyclopedic work suggests, an exciter to venery. Thus Zacutus Lusitanus, Zacutus the Portuguese, a medieval physician, author of a medical text entitled _Praxis Medica Admiranda_, enumerates the ingredients of an amatory preparation. The composition is as follows: Musk and ambergris, pterocarpus santalinus, both red and yellow, calamus aromaticus, cinnamon, bole Tuccinum, galanga, aloes-wood, rhubarb, absinthe, Indian myrobalon: all pounded together.
The most remarkable literary erotic production of China may reasonably be considered to be the picaresque novel Chin P’ing Mei, the adventurous history of Hsi Men and his six wives. It has been styled the Chinese Decameron, but it transcends the scope, the contents, the variousness of incident and characterization and sense of vivid reality manifested in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Chinese tale is full of a variety of scenes and episodes, in the manner of the European large-scaled, spacious novel. It is also permeated by a tone of ribaldry, a vein of salacious eroticism, and a large number of episodes describing amatory experiences. One particular scene deals with a species of pill, the composition of which is not revealed, that has unique functional effects.