The Anatomy of Melancholy

Gómez counts salt among the things that commonly provoke untimely lust, and maintains that eating salt makes women more lustful. That, they say, is why Venus was born from the ocean.

Why are there so many thousands of whores in Venice? The reason is plain: Venus was born from the sea.

Hence too the fertile mother Salacia, Ocean’s wife; and perhaps the word salax, “lustful,” flowed from sal, “salt.” Bacchic apples once had such power in matters of love that wreaths made of them were placed on the statue of Bacchus.

The East Indians use cubebs steeped in wine to excite sexual desire, and the Africans use surax root. China root has the same effect; and Giambattista della Porta, in Natural Magic, book 2, chapter 16, mentions such a plant brought from India, which Theophrastus also mentions.

But countless things of this kind occur in Rhazes, Mattioli, Mizald and the other physicians. I have mentioned them so that an inexperienced person may not strike these rocks, but may deliberately steer clear of them, as far as he can, as he would shoals and reefs.