women often use a variety of plants as aphrodisiacs, according to Vaughan Stevens) Breitenstein states (_21 Jahre in India_, Theil I, p. 228) that both massage and gymnastics are used to increase sexual powers. The local application of electricity is one of the most powerful of aphrodisiacs, and McMordie found on applying one pole to a uterine sound in the uterus and the other to the abdominal wall that in the majority of healthy women the orgasm occurred. Among anaphrodisiacs, or sexual sedatives, bromide of potassium, by virtue of its antidotal relationship to strychnia, is one of the drugs whose action is most definite, though, while it dulls sexual desire, it also dulls all the nervous and cerebral activities. Camphor has an ancient reputation as an anaphrodisiac, and its use in this respect was known to the Arabs (as may be seen by a reference to it in the _Perfumed Garden_), while, as Hyrtl mentions (loc. cit. ii, p. 94), rue (_Ruta graveolens_) was considered a sexual sedative by the monks of old, who on this account assiduously cultivated it in their cloister gardens to make _vinum rutæ_. Recently heroin in large doses (see, e.g., Becker, _Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift_, November 23, 1903) has been found to have a useful effect in this direction. It may be doubted, however, whether there is any satisfactory and reliable anaphrodisiac. Charcot, indeed, it is said, used to declare that the only anaphrodisiac in which he had any confidence was that used by the uncle of Heloïse in the case of Abelard. "_Cela_ (he would add with a grim smile) _tranche la difficulte_." If semen is a stimulant when ingested, it is easy to suppose that it may exert a similar action on the woman who receives it into the vagina in normal sexual congress. It is by no means improbable that, as Mattei argued in 1878, this is actually the case. It is known that the vagina possesses considerable absorptive power. Thus Coen and Levi, among others, have shown that if a tampon soaked in a solution of iodine is introduced into the vagina, iodine will be found in the urine within an hour. And the same is true of various other substances.[137] If the vagina absorbs drugs it probably absorbs semen. Toff, of Braila (Roumania), who attaches much importance to such absorption, considers that it must be analogous to the ingestion of organic extractives. It is due to this influence, he believes, that weak and anæmic girls so often become full-blooded and robust after marriage, and lose their nervous tendencies and shyness.[138]