LOVE PHILTRES.
Love Philtres were administered for the purpose of inspiring affection
or hatred. In very early times they were frequently used, concocted,
and sold by the magicians or sorcerers, who often obtained large sums
of money in exchange, from amorously-inclined gallants and maidens.
They were composed of various extraordinary ingredients used in
medicine at the time, and were either in the form of a powder, which
was to be surreptitiously slipped into an article of food to be
swallowed, or in a liquid for anointing the clothes or hands, and by
things to be held in the mouth.
It is recorded that some sorcerers even used the Host, upon which
they traced letters of blood. The following were also used in the
preparation of philtres: the entrails of animals, feathers of birds,
scales of fishes, parings of nails, powdered loadstones, and human
blood.
It is little wonder they excited hatred. The _poculum amatorium_ or
love philtre of the Romans, and the _philtron_ of the Greeks, were
venerated with superstitious awe in early times. They became used to
such an extent by the former nation under the first emperors, that
a decree was promulgated under the Roman criminal law whereby love
philtres were deemed as poison, and the punishment inflicted on those
using them was very severe. Hairs from a wolf’s tail, the bones of the
left side of a toad which had been eaten by ants (those of the right
side were used to cause hatred), the blood of pigeons, skeletons of
snakes, the entrails of animals, and other equally disgusting things,
were included as ingredients in Roman love philtres.
Pliny states, that there were also philtres for quenching love. Thus,
“if a nest of young swallows is placed in a box and buried, on being
dug up after a few days it will be found that some of the birds have
died with their beaks closed, while others die as if gasping for
breath”. The latter were used for exciting love, and the former for
producing the opposite effect.
Horace recommends a bone torn from a hungry and voracious dog, and
Virgil describes a complete apparatus wherewith a maiden seeks to
recover the affections of a faithless lover.
The early Greek and Roman magicians used “hippomanes,” which was
the lump of flesh found in the head of a colt newly foaled, as an
ingredient in their philtres.
About the sixteenth century philtres came to be compounded and sold
by the apothecaries, who doubtless derived from them a lucrative
profit. Favourite ingredients with these later practitioners were
mandragora, cantharides, and vervain, which were supposed to have
Satanic properties. They were mixed with other herbs said to have an
aphrodisiac effect; also man’s gall, the eyes of a black cat, and the
blood of a lapwing, bat, or goat.
In Gay’s _Shepherds’ Week_ reference is thus made to love philtres:—
“Strait to the ’pothecary’s shop I went,
And in love powder all my money spent;
Behap what will next Sunday after prayers
When to the alehouse Lubberkin repairs,
These flies into his mug I’ll throw,
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow”.
“Botanomancy,” Ferrand states, “which is done by the noise or crackling
that kneeholme, box, or bay leaves make when they are crushed betwixt
one’s hands or cast into the fire, was of old in use among the pagans,
who were wont to bruise poppy flowers betwixt their hands, and by this
means thinking to know their loves.”
A CHARME OR AN ALLAY FOR LOVE.
“If so be a toad be laid
In a sheepskin newly flaid,
And that ty’d to man ’twill sever
Him and his affections ever.”—Herrick’s _Hesperides_.
The winged ant was another favourite ingredient in love philtres, and
was first used by Rhazes, who prepared the winged ant in the form
of tincture by maceration in alcohol. This tincture, dropped in the
homœopathic manner into wine or mixed with food, was supposed to have
a wonderful action in producing symptoms of the tender passion in the
coldest hearts. The winged ants alone were used in this preparation,
which enjoyed a long reputation, and was subsequently known as
“Hoffmann’s Water of Magnanimity,” and largely used in the seventeenth
century as an aphrodisiac.