Part 11 (1/2)
If the one-two punch of Barry White and candlelight just ain't doin' the trick, maybe your l.u.s.t needs some thrust from a less traditional source. Here are a couple of internationally acclaimed remedies from the days before v.i.a.g.r.a.
_01:: Basil If you're desperate for a quick trick to jumpstart an ailing love life, just look to the sweetest herb on your spice rack for the remedy. That's right! According to pract.i.tioners of the voodoo belief system in Haiti, good ol' basil is the Spanish fly of your kitchen cabinet. Said to be sacred to the Haitian G.o.ddess of love, Erzulie, basil is added as an aphrodisiac to a special incense burned to invoke her spirit in voodoo love ceremoniesobviously, for romantic purposes. The Old World herb is also sprinkled liberally on food and eaten to stimulate that tingling feeling.
_02:: Antlers Perhaps because they resemble erect phalluses, antlers have been considered aphrodisiacs in traditional Asian medical folklore for over 2,000 years. Pract.i.tioners of traditional medicine recommend grinding up the soft, velvety skin that covers deer antlers and sprinkling it on food or mixing it into a beverage. In fact, the bony outgrowths are so prized that one species, the Tibet red deer, has actually been hunted to near extinction. Luckily, scientists recently discovered a small herd of 200 of these animals near Lhasa, Tibet, we hope none of which will die in the name of love. Or l.u.s.t.
_03:: Xanat The flower of the vanilla orchid was reputed by the native cultures of Central America to be an aphrodisiac, and vanilla still carries this a.s.sociation in Mexico. In native folklore, Xanat, the youngest daughter of the fertility G.o.ddess, suffered from unrequited love for a young man of the Totonac tribe. In fact, she was forbidden to marry him because she was divine and he a mortal. Since she couldn't marry a human, however, the benevolent Xanat turned herself into a flower with aphrodisiacal qualities so she could help the human race do its thing.
_04:: Frog Legs Sometimes you can have too much of a wooder, goodthing. In the case of an unfortunate group of French Foreign Legion soldiers in North Africa, frog legs proved to be such an effective enhancer of ”erectile function” that priapisma prolonged, painful erection that will not go awayensued. Subsequently, researchers from American universities found that the frog legs contained enormous amounts of cantharidin, better known as Spanish fly. It turned out the frogs had been eating meloid beetles, one of the main sources of the legendary aphrodisiac, eventually making things hard for the soldiers.
_05:: Nutmeg Another salacious spice lurking in your pantry, nutmeg has long been thought of as an aphrodisiac by a variety of cultures. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hindus ate it for that purpose, and the tradition continued into both the Arab and Chinese civilizations. In fact, in contemporary India, couples eat a mix made of nutmeg, honey, and a half-boiled egg before s.e.x to increase their endurance and make intercourse last longer. However, nutmeg may also have unpredictable hallucinogenic effects, and in large quant.i.ties can be fatal.
_06:: Sweet Potatoes Shortly after Columbus made landfall in 1492, the natives of Hispaniola introduced him to the sweet potato, a member of the morning glory family. Spanish colonizers soon spread the sweet potato lovin' to Asia and Europe, the popularity to cultivate it driven in part by its reputation as an aphrodisiac. In Health's Improvement, a medical guide from 1595, Dr. Thomas m.u.f.fet wrote that sweet potatoes increase not only libido, but apparently also the incidence of flatulence, claiming that they ”nourish mightily...engendering much flesh, blood, and seed, but withal encreasing wind and l.u.s.t.”
_07:: Tiger Today tigers are one of the most endangered species on earth, with the main population in Asia all but wiped out by poachers. Sadly, this is due in large part to a widespread belief in East Asian cultures that tiger flesh is medicinal for a variety of ailments and complaints. Tiger p.e.n.i.s, bone, liver, fat, and whiskers are all reputed to stimulate s.e.xual desire in men, driving the illicit trade and pus.h.i.+ng the rare animals ever closer to extinction. Even worse? Despite the fact that its illegal, you can probably find a tiger parts dealer near you: tiger is commonly sold under the table in American cities that are home to large numbers of East Asian immigrants.
_08:: Unagi, Unagi Served raw in sus.h.i.+ or cooked as part of an udon (noodle) dish, sea eel, or unagi, is reputed in j.a.pan to be an aphrodisiac. The a.s.sociation likely springs from a rather obvious similarity between the shape of the eel and, as usual, an erect p.e.n.i.s. Of course, there might be some science behind the belief as well. Unagi is high in vitamin A, which may help s.e.xual function. Although unagi is an increasingly popular item on American sus.h.i.+ menus, most diners are unaware of its erotic a.s.sociations in j.a.panese cuisine.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Our Parents?
4 Historical Eloping Tales
Love, they say, conquers all. But sometimes a little thing like parental permission can put up a tough fight. The following four couples didn't get their permission slips signed before taking field trips to the altar.
_01:: Peter Abelard and Heloise Leonard de Selva In 12th-century France, Fulbert, a priest of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, hired Abelard, a gifted but contrary theologian and Aristotelian philosopher, to tutor his brainy young niece, Heloise. As you might have predicted, Abelard and Heloise fell in love. What wasn't predicted, however, was that young Abelard would impregnate her. Understandably, Heloise's uncle was enraged, s.h.i.+pping her off to Normandy for the duration of her pregnancy. After giving birth to a son, she returned to Paris, where, again defying uncle's wishes, Heloise and Abelard slipped off for a secret wedding. What's an overprotective uncle to do? Fulbert organized his male relatives into a posse, ambushed Abelard, and castrated him, which effectively stopped history from repeating itself. Abelard became a monk and Heloise reluctantly entered a convent. All wasn't lost, however, and their love affair continued in the form of letters, later collected in book form. In what can be considered a moderately happy ending (given the circ.u.mstances, not to mention the uncle), Heloise ended her life as abbess of the Paraclete, an abbey that Abelard had founded, and was buried next to him.
_02:: John Scott and Bessy Surtees John Scott was a graduate student at Oxford in 1722, but banker Aubone Surtees wanted more for his daughter Bessy than a merchant's sonespecially one who'd been a notorious scamp as a boy. Yet, as songwriter Bob Dylan would put it more than 250 years later, ”Love and only love, it can't be denied.” Against the wishes of her father and his own (who thought John would imperil his academic career), Scott used a ladder to s.n.a.t.c.h young Bessy from an upstairs window, and they ran away to Scotland to marry. (It was easier for English couples to get hitched north of the border in those days.) Luckily for the couple, however, neither daddy knew best. John Scott bettered his father's and father-in-law's predictions by becoming the longtime lord chancellor of England. In fact, today, the once mischievous rascal is better remembered as the first earl of Eldon.
_03:: Henry Fitch and Josefa Carrillo When sea captain Henry Delano Fitchlater a prominent California landownerfell for 14-year-old Josefa Carillo in 1826, he fell hard. By the laws of Mexican California, however, the San Diego girl couldn't marry a Protestant foreigner, so the Nantucket-born Yankee converted to Catholicism and had himself rechristened Enrique Domingo Fitch. Josefa's father, after some persuading, agreed to the match. During the wedding, however, before the couple could say their vows, Josefa's uncle arrived with an order from the California governor to stop the ceremony. (She later claimed that the governor wanted her for himself.) At the bride-to-be's urging, Fitch took his gal aboard s.h.i.+p and they sailed off to Chile, where they wed. After they returned to California, Fitch was charged with kidnapping and jailed for three months until the governor could verify the legality of the nuptials.
Touch of Evil Sixteen-year-old Konrad Falkowski eloped with Joan Kenlay in 1952. But to avoid being tracked down by their parents, the young man changed his name, and it's this moniker we still use to refer to the famous actor: Robert Conrad.
_04:: James Joyce and Nora Barnacle Budding Irish writer James Joyce convinced his Dublin sweetheart, Nora Barnacle, to run away with him to Austria-Hungary in 1904. It wasn't exactly an elopement, though, because Joyce objected to the inst.i.tution of marriage on philosophical grounds. So, they skipped the ceremony and dove straight into the happily-ever-after bit, living together and raising two children. Joyce, who had by now achieved fame and notoriety, especially for his complex masterpiece Ulysses, only agreed to marry his longtime love when the nagging got to be too much. We're not talking about Nora's whining here, but rather her daughter Lucia's. The young woman's incessant complaints about her parents' domestic arrangement drove them to the altar. In 1931, the couple finally legalized their union during a trip from their home in Paris to London. (So, in the end, they ran away to get married after all.) 5 Greatest Syphilitics of All Time From Columbus to Gauguin to Al Capone, who knew that syphilis would be the great equalizer? The following are five notables who might have fared better if they'd kept their belts buckled and their legs crossed.
_01:: The Syphilitic Explorer The long-held view was that Columbus's crew picked up syphilis in the Caribbean in 1492 and brought it back to Europe, where the ”new” disease turned epidemic. But what about Columbus himself? He returned from his third voyage west in 1504 partially paralyzed, suffering edema, and mentally deranged. But can anybody be sure what caused those symptoms without examining Columbus's bones? Well, no. He could have had typhus or rheumatic fever, but syphilis can't be ruled out.
The Evil How-to HOW TO SPOT ”THE SIGNS” (OTHER THAN JUST HAIRY PALMS) Active physician, health innovator, and, yes, the founder of a cereal company, John Harvey Kellogg wrote a handbook for s.e.xual behavior in 1877 (while on his honeymoon) called ”Plain Facts for Old and Young, A Warning on the Evils of s.e.x.” A key focus of this piece was a section containing 39 signs for parents to use to tell whether their children were masturbating or ”performing the solitary vice,” as it was called. The following are some of the signs that, according to Kellogg, all good parents should be on the lookout for: emaciation, paleness, colorless lips and gums, exhaustion, coughing, shortness of breath, chest pains, disobedience, irritability, a dislike for activity and play, sleeplessness, failure to get lessons done, forgetfulness, inattention, and liking to be alone. Kellogg went on to identify some other telltale signs, including bashfulness, boldness, mock piety, rounded shoulders, weak backs, pain in the limbs, lack of breast development in females, bad positions while sleeping, large appet.i.tes and the use of large amounts of spices, sunken and red eyes, and epileptic fits. Finally, especially be on the lookout for acne, bitten fingernails, moist, cold hands, bedwetting, the use of tobacco, and fondness for using bad language and listening to obscene stories. It's a good thing Kellogg was so specific; otherwise we might have started accusing everyone.
_02:: The Syphilitic King A wound on Henry VIII's leg became a festering sore that wouldn't heal. Ulcers spread over his legs and feet. And as he grew hugely obese, the English king's toes turned gangrenous. Not exactly a thing of beauty, Old Hal had something going on. The latter-day diagnosis: advanced diabetes. So what's with the notion that Henry's late-life dementia came from syphilis? Some say first wife Catherine of Aragon's several miscarriages suggest a s.e.xually transmitted disease. And then there's the sad case of Henry's son Edward VI, the boy king with the terrible skin rash whose hair and nails fell out. Tradition says Eddie died at age 15 of tuberculosis. Many, however, argue that he and his half sister Queen Mary I had congenital syphilis pa.s.sed on from Henry. Of course, it's all unconfirmed. None of Henry's children, including Elizabeth I (another suspected but unconfirmed syphilitic), produced offspring.
_03:: The Syphilitic Philosopher On a winter day when Friedrich Nietzsche was 54, the German-Swiss philosopher, clad in only his underwear, ran weeping into a street in Turin, Italy, where he tearfully embraced a horse. Stricken with diphtheria and bacterial dysentery during his service in the Franco-Prussian War (18701871), Nietzsche never fully recovered his health. His late-life dementia, however, more likely stemmed from tertiary syphilis. In other words, he had probably picked up the disease in his youth and it had run its course for decades. Nietzsche, a philosopher later admired (and grossly misunderstood) by Adolf Hitler, spent the last 11 years of his life totally mad.
Touch of Evil One radical cure for syphilitic patients was to give them malaria. The high fever worked to kill the syphilis, after which the malaria was easily cured with quinine.
_04:: The Syphilitic Painter Born in Paris, Paul Gauguin spent his early childhood in Peru before moving back to France. As a young man Gauguin signed on as a merchant sailor to see and sample the sensual riches of the world. Later, after he'd supposedly settled down, Gauguin and his wife moved from France to her native Denmark, where they raised their family and Gauguin had a career as a stockbroker. But then Gauguin chucked his family and his career to live a new life as a bohemian painter in Tahiti. So where did he pick up the syphilis that plagued him in his later years? It could have been in the South Seas, although it's more likely that a Parisian prost.i.tute gave him the pox. Nearly blind, barely able to walk, and in terrible pain, this forefather of modern art died alone in his Maison du Jouir (House of Pleasure) in the village of Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.
_05:: The Syphilitic Gangster When New York tough guy Alphonse ”Scarface” Capone arrived in Chicago in 1919, one of his first jobs in the town where he would become America's most famous gangster was looking after mobster Big Jim Colosimo's string of brothels. So, did old Al sample the service? Well, a gentleman gangster never tells. What we will say, however, is that wherever he picked up the ”goods,” years later, he was discovered to be suffering from paresisa psychosis that follows after the late-stage disease eats away a significant part of the brain. Released from Alcatraz Federal Prison in 1939, Capone entered a Baltimore hospital and spent his last years deep in syphilitic dementia.
The Cost of Free Love:
4 Not-So-Straitlaced Reformers of
Victorian Times
A glimpse of stocking may have been shocking, but a vocal minority of 19th-century reformers fought for your right to hook up.
_01:: John Humphrey Noyes (18111886) As a theology student at Yale, John Humphrey Noyes declared himself sin free and in a state of perfection. Not surprisingly, Johnny the Pure was denied a license to preach, so he organized fellow perfectionists into a ”Bible Communist” community in Putney, Vermont. There Noyes taught a doctrine of free love. In 1846 the Putney group adopted what their leader called ”complex marriage,” such that all the women were ”married” to all the men and vice versa. Arrested for adultery, Noyes jumped bail and fled to New York, where he founded a new community in Oneida. There, the Oneida Community practiced complex marriage up until 1879, when Noyes finally gave in to pressure from outside moralists and abandoned the practice. Oneida, once an agricultural-religious utopian community, reorganized as a joint-stock manufacturer of silver flatware. As for John Noyes? He fled again, this time for Canada.