QUINCE, HELLEBORE, MORPHINE:
Aphrodisiacs, Poisons, Analgesics
I was inspired to write this essay while browsing in a “Lace and Lingerie Shop”–i.e., Sex Shop–located in a mall near Odenton, Maryland, where I teach an off-campus English course. Given its formidable array of mechanical gadgets guaranteed to produce “the most exquisite pleasures of the flesh” why, I wondered, did the shop carry no natural aphrodisiacs? After all, they’ve been around for centuries, only a few have lethal potential, and some are allegedly even effective. Bored after a while with the sex toys, or rather with evading the watchful eyes of the clerks, I headed next for a drug store. As expected, there was the usual smorgasbord of over-the-counter medications, as well as some mechanical pain relieving devices, like the trendy “analgesic magnets” and a nameless electric contraption secured behind locked glass doors. But no willow bark, no poppies, no dwale, no belladonna . . . Finally–it was almost time for class–I entered a garden supply store, looking for some marigold seeds. And perhaps a weedkiller. Plentiful indeed were the various poison sprays guaranteed to eradicate weeds forever–and the ozone layer as well. But again, no natural poisons, no hellebore, no “thung” ( Monk’s Hood), no warty-capped Amanita mushrooms. . .
Have what I call the techno-chemical and the mechanical prevailed to the point where nature’s remedies and poisons are all but forgotten, except by those who patronize health food stores? Determined to redress the situation, immediately after class I booted up a computer and–ironically enough–began my project by demanding from the Internet everything it could tell me about nature’s bounty, both curative and lethal. Everything? I soon realized I had to limit myself to what struck me as most provocative, and since even when doing research I think like a poet, many of the examples I selected appealed to me first because of the allure of the words themselves. So let me begin by rekindling the fire of one such forgotten but suggestively named natural aphrodisiac, the Cydonia oblongata, or quince-pear:
Aphrodisiacs: Natural
Endorsed by the Greek physician Theophrastus back in 300 B.C., quince–or the golden apples of Hesperides–not only symbolized fertility and love but was actually consumed at weddings to prepare the bridal couple lest in their excitement they lack sufficient “mucilage, “ a substance abundant in seeds of the quince-pear. In a pinch, pectin-rich quince jelly could make do.
There’s even a rumor that Eve was aroused by a quince, not an apple. . .But other fruits and vegetables have been linked with erotic bliss, among them asparagus, beans, and, of all things, celery, especially its roots. According to a Swedish friend, an old cookbook from that country warns that celery’s digestive benefits must be weighed against its dangerously powerful sexual effects –which one can reduce by prolonged boiling of the roots.
Yet more startling: the erotic reputation of the ordinary potato, especially when scarce. To nourish not his belly but his flagging libido, in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Falstaff pleads with the sky “to rain potatoes.” Had he known about the erotic power of spices he might well have begged it to rain fennel and saffron, even salt. More venturesome, he might have turned to the animal kingdom, especially the dried and crushed body of an emerald-green beetle popularly known as Spanish Fly –though more likely than enabling him to revive his dormant love-making capacities, it would have stimulated a fatal heart attack or painful hours, even days, of priapism, culminating in a psychotic breakdown. Of course, he might also have ingested extractions from animal genitalia, snake blood, fat from a camel’s hump, white wine spiked with pulverized lizard, or Pliny’s favorite, the gall of a boar. . .
As for Ms. Falstaff? Though she might have found flaunting the scent of the ruta plant useful, given its propensity for making young men feel they are demonically possessed with sexual desire for the woman who so flaunts, probably she would be drawn more to any number of mechanical stimulators, given the disproportionally heavy emphasis in any techno-sexual catalogue or display on tools for female arousal.
Aphrodisiacs: Mechanical
What names these objects bear! The Purple Pearl Driver, a “specialty vibrator” filled with pearl-like beads, and equipped with remote multi-speed control; The Black Stallion, a gel version of the latter; The Madame Butterfly strap-on alternative, which can be put to work while one is doing the laundry or waiting in a supermarket line, even watching the soaps; The Pocket Rocket, so well-behaved nobody will hear it, which makes it especially suitable for long plane trips;
The Hummingbird; the $250 Eroscillator, complete with four interchangeable attachments endorsed by none less than Dr. Ruth–to name but a few.
Of course, men, too might be attracted by a number of mechanical devices, especially those that promise to enhance the size of the male member. . .to say nothing of dolls with “life-like” female organs, guaranteed to be 100% free from disease, the likelihood of impregnation, selfish desires, moodiness, and headaches. But should he be nostalgic for the real thing, scientists have recently come up with the best chemical panacea yet–
Aphrodisiacs: Chemical
I speak, of course, of Viagra. Expensive, risky, in some countries still illegal, but to countless numbers of contemporary men, well worth the potential drawbacks. Since Viagra, Pfizer’s weak pun of a brand name for the alleged vigour-inducing citrate salt of sildenafil, was approved for use in the United States on March 27, 1998, at least 6,000,000 prescriptions have been written for about 50,000,000 doses of “the little blue pill” just in America. (I write this exactly nine months later–about the same time the world’s first Viagra babies are doubtless making their debut). Among reported side effects, the blue pill can make men literally see blue, a condition known as “the blue (or green) halo effect.” As well it can cause a spectrum of ills ranging from dyspnea to dysphagia, including serious cardiovascular events, over 130 culminating in death, according to figures released in November of 1998 and limited to the United States. One website even mentions–presumably tongue in cheek–the danger of Penis Explosion Syndrome.
No wonder the purveyors of natural products like Empurana, extracted from the bark of trees in the Brazilian rain-forest, are stepping up their advertising. Not only are these products much cheaper than Viagra, but allegedly safer and efficacious for women as well, a sign that the purveyors of bark extracts are responding to recent hints that the Big V might also be useful as a female stimulus. Lest she fear Empurana, a woman could turn to an all-natural compound of licorice, extract of wild yam, and bee pollen granules. . . But in the War of Chemical Love Potions, no side can be complacent; hence Pfizer’s Viagra-2, which promises total and immediate elimination of contraindications. . .
Would Falstaff have taken Viagra? I doubt it, if only on the grounds of bad poetry. Except possibly for its association with the color blue, which evokes analogies with such metaphors as blue moon, blue heaven, the Azure Dragon of Spring, and the blueness of revelation, peace, piety, and primordial simplicity, Viagra is deficient to the point of utter inadequacy when it comes to aesthetic resonance. Even Shakespeare would have had a hard time poeticizing “a selective inhibitor of cyclic guanosine monophosphate”–except for comic effect. Ah, for the Gall of a Boar, the Quivering Jelly of a Bright Yellow Quince. . .
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Poisons: Natural
Hecate, the Greek goddess of sorcery, supposedly discovered the poisonous potential of plants, though as far back as 3000 B.C. the Assyrians were aware of both vegetable and mineral poisons, perhaps paving the way for later Arab mastery of noxious products, especially since they could easily be concealed in the spicy food characteristic of the Middle East. But Jews were not lacking in expertise– the Rabbi Maimonides wrote a treatise on poison and its antidotes–nor were Christians, who by the 14th century had compiled several compendia of toxic substances, including not just the expectable arsenic and laurel berries, but cat’s brains, leopard’s gall, and menstrual blood.
Though some natural poisons were thought to have healing properties–e.g. Pliny’s recommendation of henbane for earaches, despite its potential for stimulating nervous disorders–they were sought mostly for their convenience as weapons since the poisoner could work in stealth, avoiding vengeance from relatives or friends of the deceased. Some of the more colorful medieval poisons still used today–at least by mystery writers:
–Conium Maculatum, its official name derived from the Anglo-Saxon words for shore plant, but better known as hemlock; the State Poison of Athens, its most famous victim, of course, was Socrates.
–Cyanide, extracted from the pits of plums, apricots, and cherries, as well as apple seeds.
–Hellebore, its name a composite of the Greek words for injury and food; Pliny traces its history to a physician of 1400 B.C. who took delight in poisoning his patients, his mayhem an early example of iatrogenic (physician-caused) illness.
–Solanum, known as Bittersweet and Deadly Nightshade, related to the ordinary potato: not the only instance of an overlap between a natural aphrodisiac and natural poison (Spanish Fly is another).
Though I’m not aware of any poetic celebrations of such mundane plants as the poisonous versions of ivy, sumac, and oak, a number of other substances have been deemed worthy of literary treatment. It was henbane (literally “henbona”) that was poured into “the porches” of his ears, claims the ghost in Hamlet, resulting in the death of his regal eminence while he took an afternoon nap in his orchard, henbane, “the leprous distillment whose effect/ Holds such an enmity with blood of man/ That swift as quicksilver it courses through/ The natural gates and alleys of the body.” (Act One, Scene V, 69ff). And who can forget Keats’s evocation of “Wolf’s-bane. tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine,” as well as “nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine” and rosaries composed of yew-berries in his “Ode on Melancholy”–though he explicitly rejects use of same in favor of peonies and morning roses? In “The Poison Tree,” Blake does not name a specific substance though the tree’s lethal “bright apple” raises the spectre not only of some Edenic toxin but possibly cyanide. . .
Poisons: Mechanical and Chemical
While natural poisons, at least their names, possess a certain glamour, and mechanical aphrodisiacs bear a certain charm or allure (albeit often comical), techno-poisons, both mechanical and chemical, are plain damn scary. The most egregious examples of mechanical poisoning include missiles and bombs, both in and of themselves and as potential carriers of toxins, as well as aerosol disseminators of microbes like the smallpox virus, anthrax spores, even the plague bacillus. Relatively minor anthrax diseases can occur naturally by exposure to an infected animal, but if the bacillus is spread by aerosols, the resulting illness, called inhalational anthrax, usually kills within 72 hours after symptoms develop. (Russian authorities still refuse to confirm or deny the hypothesis, but independent reviewers agree that it was the accidental release from a military facility of aerosols containing anthrax that in 1979 mysteriously killed 68 residents of Sverdlovsk).
Versions of biological warfare go back to the Romans, who through the dumping of dead animals clogged and contaminated their enemies’ water supply; more mechanically sophisticated were the Tartars, developers of a means to catapult bodies infected with the plague bacillus over city walls (possibly a cause of the plague epidemic that nearly decimated late medieval Europe). More recently, the Japanese created a special group, the infamous Unit 731, responsible for deploying toxins on Manchurian prisoners of war; in 1941, they began to explode “bacterial bombs” over China. Shortly thereafter, the United States started its own secret experiments with toxic sprays (targets included the city of San Francisco, sprayed with a toxin that created red or pink pigments in contact with certain types of soil).
Electricity, though for the most part harnessed for the benefit of humans, has also been appropriated as the key ingredient of another sort of mechanical poisoning-unto-death. When first put to use in 1890, the electric chair inspired such comments as “We live in a higher civilization from this day on” (Dr. Alfred Southwick) and “Strong men fainted and fell like logs to the floor” (The New York Herald). As early as 1881 the same Dr. Southwick, a dentist and steamboat engineer, felt so exhilarated when he witnessed a drunk die painlessly after touching the terminals of an electric generator that he immediately encouraged New York politicians to replace hanging with the seemingly more humane process of electrocution. A few years later Thomas Edison himself experimented with murdering by electricity a number of cats and dogs. And shortly after the nation’s first Electrical Execution Law went into effect in 1889, one William Kemmler of Buffalo, New York decapitated his lover, Matilda, with an axe, thereby achieving the distinction of being the first human to be executed in the electric chair. Because of the technicians’ lack of experience, Kemmler didn’t actually die until the second act, so to speak. One assumes he (and the executioners as well) was totally unaware of the electric current’s physiological effects: the raising of his body temperature to over 130 degrees so his internal organs were cooked in the manner of a side of beef; the involuntary spasms and elimination of feces; the flight of both his eyeballs from his skull, to name but a few. In subsequent electrocutions, popped eyeballs eventually would be camouflaged by forcing the soon-to-be-executed to wear a leather mask.
Surely even the most blatant electronic vibrators and dildoes, The Purple Pearl Driver, The Ramrod, The Black Stallion, The Hummingbird, seem utterly prim by comparison. . .
Articles about germ warfare, particularly the sub-category of chemical weapons, appear almost daily, no surprise since at least 17 countries now possess the means to bring about mass poisoning through synthetically-produced toxins, including nerve gas and vesicants that cause lethal burns. Since the 1995 terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system, which involved use of the lethal nerve gas sarin, the fear of man-made poisonous compounds has become particularly keen. Agents like sarin not only work quickly but, like anthrax spread by aerosols, are odorless and invisible; they work by inhibiting a nerve and muscle enzyme, thus bringing about seizures and respiratory failure. Sulfur mustard not only blisters and burns the skin but brings about death within hours of exposure; likewise, phosgene, a lung toxicant that causes fatal respiratory collapse. Indeed, like the difference between biological and chemical weapons, the distinction between mechanical and chemical poisons is often blurry, since a chemist knowledgeable about the workings of DNA can synthesize microbes which, in turn, can be spread by mechanical devices.
The history of modern chemical toxins begins in the 1930s with the research of a German scientist, Gerhard Schrader, whose efforts to develop an effective pesticide led to the synthesis of the nerve agent tabun, closely related to sarin. Why Hitler did not make use of these toxins remains a mystery, but whatever the reason–possibly he was convinced that German cities themselves would end up as the most contaminated–the world must be grateful. And even more grateful for restraint in the use of toxins on a massive scale during the Cold War, for in 1949 the British developed an even more potent nerve agent, again allegedly in pursuit of the perfect insecticide. Named simply VX, the highly toxic compound was soon manufactured in the United States as well; enormous stockpiles remain here and elsewhere despite efforts to destroy them.
Compared with the former, other aerosols, including weed killers, seem relatively benign despite their threat to the ozone layer– in the long run a very big despite. Though most of my neighbors would protest vehemently, I myself say better a field of weeds than soil contaminated by, say, dioxin. At the very least, some weeds, both legal and illegal, contain substances capable of numbing one’s awareness of pain. . .
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Analgesics: from Pig Fat to Percodan to Biofeedback
Elephant, bull, and goat blood; lion and pig fat; curdled milk; cucumber roots; onions, garlic, lettuce, and cabbage; shavings of ivory; bear-grease mixed with laudanum and lamp-black; human bone marrow and saliva: such are some of the natural analgesics mentioned, if not necessarily approved, by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, that vast gallimaufry of facts, legends, and curmudgeonly opinions.
Not so oddly, some of the substances he cites, like walnuts, mandrake juice, and pennyroyal, also qualified as natural aphrodisiacs; others were more commonly known as poisons, but had medicinal uses as well. Thus the same deadly aconite that causes immediate death if rubbed “on the sexual parts of a female” can, when mixed with wine, heal scorpion stings, since “its nature is to kill a human being unless it finds something else in him to destroy.” Poultices made from deadly hemlock, sans poisonous seeds and leaves, cool the stomach, relieve catarrh and eye irritations and all manner of swellings. Ah, but there’s a paradox within the paradox: the same hemlock that kills can also render young girls more nubile by augmenting the firmness of their breasts, but if rubbed on a man’s testicles, it suppresses sexual desire. . .More versatile the ubiquitous wormwood, the main ingredient of absinthe, for mixed “with sil, nard from Gaul and. . . vinegar” it soothes the bowels and expels worms from the stomach; it not only helps avert sea-sickness but when worn under a cummerbund can keep the groin from swelling. . .or appearing to swell. Is liposuction really any safer?
The closest Pliny comes to noting mechanical analgesics is when he excoriates Asclepiades,
virtually accusing him of malpractice. Among the once revered doctor’s many ‘distressing and crude practices” were hydrotherapy accomplished by swirling ice-cold water and use of a bath whose floors were suspended over a “hypocaust,” a system of flues in a floor or walls capable of distributing the heat from a furnace. Doctors in general aroused his ire, especially those who practiced in ancient Greece: “only a doctor can kill a man with impunity.” So even hot baths, recommended in order to cook the food inside the body, are targets of contempt, along with depilatories and devices for determining pulse rates.
How would Pliny react to such modern medical devices as a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Stimulation) unit, a set of velcro-strapped magnets, or a biofeedback machine? Probably with the same sort of churlish laughter aimed at those mercenary Greek physicians and their cold tubs. To be fair, TENS, a sort of poor man’s electric chair that delivers a low-voltage current through electrodes placed on the skin, has been recognized as helpful in a number of painful conditions by none less than the Harvard Medical School Health Letter, though no one knows just why it works: possibly the electrical impulses from TENS stimulate the body to produce more endorphins, or built-in analgesics. And biofeedback, which appeals to conscious control over pain also has its advocates, especially for treatment of stress. As for magnets, the jury is out despite a spate of recent books touting this latest low-tech miracle.
But surely he would not merely have laughed but blatantly abhorred the use of mechanical respirators, heart-lung machines, and other “heroic” devices now commonly offered to prolong the existence of the dying. Far ahead of his times, Pliny caps his irascible criticism of all medicinal practices other than ingestion of herbs and simple vegetables by saying, “I do not think that life should be so sought after that it is prolonged by every possible means. Whoever you are who holds this view, death is no less certain. . . .”
When the compilers of early medical inventories mentioned codeine, they referred to its natural presence in opium. Nowadays, most codeine (known on the street as Schoolboy) is synthesized in the laboratory and combined with aspirin for cough medicine or the traveller’s delight, Lomotil, an antidote to the diarrhea that sometimes follows ingestion of foreign bacilli in water or taco sauce or fruit grown with the aid of Chinese “night-soil,” euphemism for human fertilizer. . .Many other laboratory spawned modern narcotics lack any natural history at all; familiar examples include Dilaudid, Demerol, Percodan, and Darvon. All are controlled substances in the United States, available only by prescription, but nonetheless widely abused on “the street” because they produce an almost immediate rush of pleasure, even euphoria, despite annoying side-effects and addictive potential. Like some poisons, they, as well as natural narcotics, have evoked a number of colorful names: scat, horse, brown sugar, scag (heroin); lords (Dilaudid); Miss Emma (morphine); China White (Percodan), Tango (fentanyl derivatives). Would Keats have used these names? No. But Shakespeare, yes, especially slipping them into the mouths of some of his lowlife characters.
Aside from well-publicized controversy over how to manage the social problems engendered by abuse of these drugs, controversy also rages over their use in cases of intractable pain, notably of terminal cancer patients. Though most doctors will now prescribe morphine (a natural substance) for the latter, some still cling to the puritanical conviction that despite great pain, such drugs should be used sparingly if at all because 1) they can weaken the immune system and thus bring on “premature” death, thus depriving the patient of days or weeks of suffering which–who knows–might be willed by a draconian god as preparation for the after-life, or 2) they can make the dying patient a drug addict for, say, a couple of weeks, as shameful as if he were stealing and selling the stuff in some back alley.
I dare say Pliny would have approved the use of morphine for the dying, particularly since it emphatically does not purport to extend life in the gruesome manner of some mechanical devices. Whether he would have approved similar drugs for the sake of pleasure alone is an open question: probably yes if they were natural rather than chemically synthesized, just as he approved the analgesic effects of sexual intercourse : “Athletes when sluggish are revitalized by love-making, and the voice is restored from being gruff and husky. . . .[it] cures pain in the lower regions, impaired vision, unsoundness of mind and depression.” Quite a contrast to Democritus, who dismissed love-making as necessary merely for propagation of the species…
Hmmmmm. Would more sex allow me to jettison my spectacles? Or, at the very least, the cough drops I suck when afflicted by “teacher’s throat?” If so, must the sex involve a partner, or will self-induced sexual pleasure suffice if a partner is not immediately available? I see I have returned to the sex shop. This time I won’t let the staring clerks bother me as I rummage through the pink and purple devices, heart-shaped, doll-shaped, rubberized, jelled, whatever–searching not for the perfect aphrodisiac but the most effective treatment for my husky voice. . .
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