As the West inherited and absorbed many cultural phases, views, concepts, practices, mores from the East, it likewise acquired some of the amatory and medicinal knowledge relating to electuaries and healing methods, herbs and plants that might be contributory to health and well-being, and, as an antique encyclopedic work suggests, an exciter to venery. Thus Zacutus Lusitanus, Zacutus the Portuguese, a medieval physician, author of a medical text entitled _Praxis Medica Admiranda_, enumerates the ingredients of an amatory preparation. The composition is as follows: Musk and ambergris, pterocarpus santalinus, both red and yellow, calamus aromaticus, cinnamon, bole Tuccinum, galanga, aloes-wood, rhubarb, absinthe, Indian myrobalon: all pounded together. * * * * * The most remarkable literary erotic production of China may reasonably be considered to be the picaresque novel Chin P’ing Mei, the adventurous history of Hsi Men and his six wives. It has been styled the Chinese Decameron, but it transcends the scope, the contents, the variousness of incident and characterization and sense of vivid reality manifested in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Chinese tale is full of a variety of scenes and episodes, in the manner of the European large-scaled, spacious novel. It is also permeated by a tone of ribaldry, a vein of salacious eroticism, and a large number of episodes describing amatory experiences. One particular scene deals with a species of pill, the composition of which is not revealed, that has unique functional effects. * * * * * In China erotic perversions were as numerous as in ancient Rome. The cinaedus, the Gito who is prominent in Petronius’ _Satyricon_, is termed in China _amasi_. Dr. Jacobus X, the French anthropologist, has a great deal to say on this subject. * * * * * The Islamic concept of erotic practice is associated with devoutness. It implies the transmission to man of the divine creative force. Thus the erotic never becomes lewd or lascivious or prurient for the mere purpose of lubricity. The Koran counsels physiological intimacy as a sacred function, an ordained and enjoined rite. Omar Haleby ibn Othman, the Arab erotologist, likewise chants the erotic act as an expression, a manifestation derived from sacred sources. The erotic consummation has lost its fleshly, earthy connotation. It has assumed a venerable and venerated sanctity. * * * * *