There are some 22,000 articles and 12,000 illustrations. The contents range over all aspects of human sexual activity, in their relation to psychology and biology, medicine and jurisprudence, sociology and psychotherapy. Folklore and ethnography, marriage, prostitution, fertility rites, rites of initiation, the deviations of society, secret amatory sects, flagellation and biographical memoirs comprise the introductory matter. Other subjects discussed and examined include: erotic sculpture, sex mythology, criminology and forensic medicine as they affect perversions, and contemporary developments along the lines of research. * * * * * Liquid and also solid nourishment, when essentially compounded of wholesome ingredients, will unquestionably, in the contemporary consensus of medical opinion, promote amatory capacity. To go one step further, any nourishing food or beverage will, to the extent of its wholesomeness as an acceptable and normally consumed commodity, contribute to the general organic euphoria of the subject, and consequently to his physiological vigor. In a general sense, therefore, the fantastic or repellent compounds, brews and stews, lotions, electuaries, ointments, and philtres that, for long centuries, were transmitted either in folk legend or imprinted in grave treatises, are, according to medical authority, brusquely deprecated, and in many cases entirely discounted. Yet, as is well known, legend and saga, folklore and tradition, often retain within themselves accumulated knowledge based on tested validities. * * * * * With the increase in experimentation along medical, pharmaceutical, and culinary lines, there is a corresponding emphasis on food and preparations that promote physiological well-being and act as tonics and stimulants. For these purposes, extracts of the gonads or sex-glands, and pituitary extracts, are medically recommended in certain cases of physiological weakness. In a more gastronomic direction, there are wholesome broths and soups, such as: mushroom soup, lentil soup, celery soup, as well as salads, lobster dishes, and curries: all of which contain elements that are traditionally reputed to aid in increasing vigor. * * * * * In a novel by John Brophy entitled _Windfall_, and published in London in 1951, the hero arrives in New York, where he is confronted with the fact that the drive for erotic aids is as urgent as ever: It was true: where Broadway converged on, before it crossed, the undeviating straightness of Sixth Avenue, the wide double roadway was surrounded by theatres, cinemas, hotels and restaurants and newspaper offices, indiscernible behind huge, colored, epileptically moving signs advocating, pictorially or by blunt lettered exhortation, whiskies and pea-nuts, cigarettes, motor-cars, night-clubs, patent medicines and proprietary brands of sexual stimulants.