CHAPTER XII.

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.