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 rutae_. 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.
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