This book is in the nature of a literary and historical survey of aphrodisiacs, their objectives, techniques, and effectiveness. The contents cover world-wide territories, and range from antiquity through the Middle Ages down to the present day. With academic emphasis, they point up the continuous urgency that has driven men in quest of an erotic elixir and a putative panacea, in the form of philtres and unguents, invocations, prescriptions, and mechanistic devices, for their exhausted vigors. Harry E. Wedeck teaches classical literature at Brooklyn College.
