Considering that tomorrow is Valentine's Day: http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/60/67222.htm?printing=true
"You may have heard that oysters are an aphrodisiac -- but what about potatoes, skink flesh, and sparrow brains? These things were once considered aphrodisiacs, too. Almost everything edible was, at one time or another. Aphrodisiac recipes have been cooked up throughout the world for millennia. In Europe, up to the eighteenth century, many recipes were based on the theories of the Roman physician Galen, who wrote that foods worked as aphrodisiacs if they were "warm and moist" and also "windy," meaning they produced flatulence. Spices, mainly pepper, were important in aphrodisiac recipes. And because they were reckoned to have these qualities, carrots, asparagus, anise, mustard, nettles, and sweet peas were commonly considered aphrodisiacs. An aphrodisiac, as we use the term today, is something that inspires lust. It usually isn't meant to cure impotence or infertility, problems that are now handled by separate fields of medicine. But until recently there was little distinction between sexual desire and function. Any lack of lust, potency, or fertility would have a common cure in an aphrodisiac. Galen thought that a "wind" -- or as one 16th-century writer put it, an "insensible pollution" -- inflated the penis to cause an erection, so anything that made you gassy would also make you erect... ...The Roman poet Ovid wrote in The Art of Love, after giving a litany of aphrodisiacs, "Prescribe no more my muse, nor medicines give / Beauty and youth need no provocative." No Mention Of Chocolate!? Maru __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
