"Da verbena in potu, et non erigitur virga sex diebus. Utere menthâ siccâ cum aceto: genitalia illinita succo hyoscyami aut cicutæ coitûs appetitum sedant." It has even been asserted that coffee possesses the same property. In the year 1695 it was maintained, in a thesis at the Ecole de Médicine at Paris, that the daily use of coffee deprived both man and woman of the generative power. M. Hecquet[198] relates the following anecdote as a proof of such effect:-- A Queen of Persia seeing some grooms using all their efforts to throw a horse upon the ground, enquired the reason of the trouble they were thus taking. Her attendants gave her to understand as delicately as they could, that it was far the purpose of castrating him. "How unnecessary is so much trouble," said her majesty, "they have only to give him coffee, and their object will be fully and easily attained."[199] Most probably the queen spoke from her own experience of its anti-aphrodisiacal effects upon her royal consort. There are some diseases which are considered as anti-aphrodisiacal, on account of the decided aversion which the patient who is afflicted with them feels for the pleasures of the sexual union. Thus a species of epidemic leprosy is common among the Cossacks of the Jaik, which is attended by pains in the joints and a disgust for copulation, a disgust the more extraordinary, not only because exanthematous diseases, in general excite a desire for the above act, but also inasmuch as this malady, in particular usually attacks persons in the prime of their youth. Another disease analogous to the one just mentioned, the Plica-Polonica, rages, during the autumnal season, in Poland, Lithuania, and Tartary. It is said to have been introduced into the first of these countries by the Tartars, who had it originally from India. One of the most singular phenomena attending this disorder, and which evidently proves the close sympathy existing between the head and the organs of generation, is that when the patient is bald, the Plica not unfrequently fastens upon the sexual parts, and acquires such a length as to descend below the calves of the legs. The mode of treatment, that of mercury and sudorifics, proves the mucous character of the disorder, and, consequently, accounts for its well known tendency to strike the whole animal economy with that prostration of strength which produces a total indifference to the sex. Continual exercise on horseback was considered by Hippocrates[200] as anti-aphrodisiacal and Van Sweiten commenting upon that opinion, justly observes that the continual joltings caused by so violent an exercise, added to the compression produced upon the parts of generation by the weight of the body, was by no means unlikely to produce a focal relaxation of those organs to such an extent as to prevent erection altogether.