In the Orient, honey normally and regularly takes the place occupied by sugar in Western countries. Hence honey is a common ingredient in many foods, pastries and drinks. Basically, it appears repeatedly in prescriptions designed as love-potions. It is, to take an instance, frequently mentioned by Avicenna, the eleventh century Arab philosopher, physician, and libertine, as well as by the erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi. Honey, compounded with pepper, or with ginger, or with cubebs, in various proportions and variously formed into a consistent brew, is a standard recipe in the amatory pharmacopoeia of the East. * * * * * Indian manuals on erotology contain many directions, suggestions, and specific prescriptions relative to the increase of masculine potency. Some of these prescriptions advise rare or unobtainable herbs. Others are hazardous, and may occasion dangerous reactions. Some are merely humorously and naively fantastic and impossible or futile of realization: while occasional recommendations may be warranted and may have some amatory validity. A drink consisting of milk, with sugar added and the root of the uchchata plant, piper chaba, which is a species of pepper, and liquorice reputedly has strong support as an energizing agent. Another milk concoction contains seeds of long pepper, seeds of sanseviera roxburghiana, and the hedysarum gangeticum plant, pounded together. Still another recipe advocates milk and sugar, in which the testes of a ram or goat have been boiled. * * * * * An Indian excitant, reputedly effective, is a kind of liquid paste consisting of roots of the trapa bispinosa plant, tuscan jasmine, the kasurika plant, liquorice, and kshirakapoli. All these ingredients, most of them indigenous to India, are crushed together and the conglomerate powder is put into a mixture of milk, sugar, and clarified butter, that is, ghee. The entire concoction is then slowly boiled. This is considered a potent amatory beverage, and is so recommended in the manuals. * * * * * Ghee is commonly used in Indian culinary practice. It is also a frequent ingredient in potions and compounds that are directed toward genital excitations. A reputedly forceful agent of this sort is the following recipe, in which ghee appears. Sesame seeds are soaked with sparrows’ eggs: then boiled in milk, to which ghee and sugar, the fruit of the trapa bispinosa plant and the kasurika plant, as well as beans and wheat flour, have been added. * * * * * Sparrows’ eggs and rice, boiled in milk with an admixture of honey and ghee, provide what is considered an effective amatory stimulant. A concoction of milk, honey, ghee, liquorice, sugar, and the juice of the fennel plant is considered a provocative beverage. * * * * *