Beside the immediate effect mentioned, a warm and analeptic diet by giving the body an increase of excitement and force, may render amorous desires more frequent and vivid. Thus the habitual free use of meats, game, pork, ragouts, spices, heavy wines, liquors, coffee, &c., must be considered as an indirect cause of venereal excesses, particularly if the persons who live on this regimen do not counteract its effects by active exercise. The use of vegetables, especially those which are not very nutritious, have contrary effects. This remark must not be considered too obsolete. A debilitating diet and excessive salacity sometimes coexist: The Landes of Gironde are a striking instance of this; their diet is very miserable; they live on vegetable soups made with rancid lard; broths of meal, of coarse bread, and water, pure or acidulated at most with vinegar, &c. Hence they are extremely thin, are dark and sallow, and have an appearance of unhealthiness: this however does not prevent their indulgence in love, to which they are extremely addicted. Different articles of food have been mentioned as contributing more than any others to excite the genital powers. Among them are found _fishes_. It would seem that this quality has long been attributed to them; this opinion however has not been received by moderns with much credit until it was admitted doubtingly by Montesquieu. (_Del l’esprit des lois_, Book xxiii. ch. 15.) Many authors have admitted this to be fact on the authority of this great man, and then instead of investigating whether it was true or not have attempted to assign the reasons for it. Thus the prolifick virtue of fish has been said to depend on the aromatics and other condiments with which they are prepared; on their seasoning: on the phosphorus contained in their flesh and more particularly in their milt: and by this fact, that populations on the sea-coast live almost exclusively on fish. This has been carried still farther: the parts of fishes which furnish the most of the seminal material have been determined: and this property has been ascribed to the milt, either because the semen is here secreted, or on account of the phosphorus which Fourcroy and Vauquelin have discovered in it. Some fishes however are thought to induce venereal passions more than others.