Produced by Bryan Ness, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) +----------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: | | | | Old spellings and syntax in the French | | and English texts have not been | | corrected except the typos. The letter | | "m" with a macron have been replaced | | by "mm" as there is no unicode symbol | | or symbol combination to display this | | character satisfactorily. Footnote 224 | | is referenced twice. | +----------------------------------------+ THREE ESSAYS ON THE POWERS OF REPRODUCTION. [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ VOTIVE COLUMNS Of the Ancient Oscans.] Aphrodisiacs and Anti-Aphrodisiacs: THREE ESSAYS ON THE POWERS OF REPRODUCTION; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE JUDICIAL "CONGRESS" AS PRACTISED IN FRANCE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. BY JOHN DAVENPORT. _Ubi stimulus, ibi fluxus._--HIPPOCRATES. LONDON: PRIVATELY PRINTED. 1869. PREFACE. The reproductive powers of Nature were regarded by the nations of remote antiquity with an awe and reverence so great, as to form an object of worship, under a symbol, of all others the most significant,--the _Phallus_; and thus was founded a religion, of which the traces exist to this day, not in Asia only, but even in Europe itself. That scarcely any notices of this worship should appear in modern works, except in the erudite pages of a few antiquarians may be accounted for by considering the difference of opinion between the ancients and the moderns as to what constitutes--modesty; the former being unable to see any moral turpitude in actions they regarded was the designs of nature, while the latter, by their over-strained notions of delicacy, render themselves, in some degree at least, obnoxious to the charge that, in proportion as manners becomes corrupt, language becomes more guarded,--modesty, when banished from the heart, taking refuge on the lips. To supply, to some extent, this lacuna in our popular literature has been the object of the present work, in which, it is hoped, may be found much curious and interesting physiological information, interspersed with _recherché_ and festivous anecdotes. The text is illustrated by a few plates, drawn from antiquarian sources. J. D.