apparently by increasing the blood
supply to the sexual organs, but has not been successful in all
cases or in all hands. It must always be remembered that in cases
of psychical impotence suggestion necessarily exerts a beneficial
influence, and this may work through any drug or merely with the
aid of bread pills. All exercise, often even walking, may be a
sexual stimulant, and it is scarcely necessary to add that
powerful stimulation of the skin in the sexual sphere, and more
especially of the nates, is often a more effective aphrodisiac
than any drug, whether the irritation is purely mechanical, as by
flogging, or mechanico-chemical, as by urtication or the
application of nettles. Among the Malays (with whom both men and
women often use a variety of plants as aphrodisiacs, according to
Vaughan Stevens) Breitenstein states (_21 Jahre in India_, Theil
I, p. 228) that both massage and gymnastics are used to increase
sexual powers. The local application of electricity is one of the
most powerful of aphrodisiacs, and McMordie found on applying one
pole to a uterine sound in the uterus and the other to the
abdominal wall that in the majority of healthy women the orgasm
occurred.

Among anaphrodisiacs, or sexual sedatives, bromide of potassium,
by virtue of its antidotal relationship to strychnia, is one of
the drugs whose action is most definite, though, while it dulls
sexual desire, it also dulls all the nervous and cerebral
activities. Camphor has an ancient reputation as an
anaphrodisiac, and its use in this respect was known to the Arabs
(as may be seen by a reference to it in the _Perfumed Garden_),
while, as Hyrtl mentions (loc. cit. ii, p. 94), rue (_Ruta
graveolens_) was considered a sexual sedative by the monks of
old, who on this account assiduously cultivated it in their
cloister gardens to make _vinum rutae_. Recently heroin in large
doses (see, e.g., Becker, _Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift_,
November 23, 1903) has been found to have a useful effect in this
direction. It may be doubted, however, whether there is any
satisfactory and reliable anaphrodisiac. Charcot, indeed, it is
said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had
any confidence was that used by the uncle of Heloise in the case
of Abelard. "_Cela_ (he would add with a grim smile) _tra