How to pronounce “aphrodisiac” in English

You say the word "aphrodisiac," and everyone thinks about lust, sexual desire, and we very rarely think about it in relation to reproduction.

was thought to be aphrodisiac as well.

But there was one aphrodisiac that was solely for the men's bodies, solely for men.

can be an aphrodisiac.

So heating aphrodisiacs are very popular throughout the entire era, but they're quite dangerous, particularly the Spanish fly.

So are they really aphrodisiacs if it's just aiding the mechanics?

Everyone knows chocolate is an aphrodisiac.

Animal genitalia were a popular aphrodisiac at this time.

So those are the main types of aphrodisiac that were in use or were being discussed by medical writers at this time.

So the primary use of all aphrodisiacs is to promote conception, which is not exactly how we think about them.

And so another category of aphrodisiacs are salty or slightly salty, brackish foods, because they augment the quality of seed

And so these are gradually rejected as aphrodisiacs.

So all of these groups of aphrodisiacs provide the body with something that it's missing.

But there's one group of aphrodisiacs that function under another model, and this model is often curing through sympathy and is sometimes called "the doctrine of signatures."

or a year later will say they're an aphrodisiac for a completely different reason.

So you were definitely not going to not find an aphrodisiac.

And so say salty foods stop being described as an aphrodisiac fairly early in the 18th century.

So fundamentally, aphrodisiacs in this era work in two ways.

When you're trying to write a book on why aphrodisiacs work in 17th century, that's very frustrating, very annoying.

And he said that "saline and acrimonious things were aphrodisiacs because, as Venus is said to be born of salt sea, so saline things

And this is normally my most popular category of aphrodisiacs.

Another author claimed a similarly long list of foods as windy aphrodisiacs, including pine nuts, pistachios, small nuts, chives, artichokes,

And Theophile Bonet argues that "it's commonly reported of aphrodisiacs that flatus, or wind, is necessary for venery.

yet they cannot nor ought not to be reckoned amongst aphrodisiacs.

but it's also what goes in it that makes it an aphrodisiac.

And so you might have one person say that oysters are an aphrodisiac for one reason, and another medical writer publishing the same year

Any food that nourished the body was thought to be good as an aphrodisiac because it fundamentally meant that you were producing more seed.

And so this plant is famous in the 17th century for being an aphrodisiac.

And the cuy is there mainly so that the dad can get an aphrodisiac, which is why the head is

So it's within this kind of framework that people are understanding aphrodisiacs.

Another text I read was slightly less sophisticated and said it was evident that salt was an aphrodisiac because mice on ships are

And what I really hope to show you is that we tend to think in modern society of aphrodisiacs in a very specific way.

So it was under this type of model that the people I'm looking at tried to understand aphrodisiacs and how they worked.

And the first is that you are going to hear about some quite famous, well-known aphrodisiacs.

But throughout the 17th century, they are questioning their aphrodisiacs.

of these ones that resemble the glans of the penis, most aphrodisiacs by signature relate to looking like the testicles.

I didn't talk about chocolate in the book because it's everybody's favorite go-to aphrodisiac substance, so there are hundreds of histories of chocolate.

And the reason I'm not going to talk about it is because it's seen as luxurious and exotic, and so the chocolate is an aphrodisiac,

It's one of the ways in which people could say, oh, that food works as an aphrodisiac and it works for fertility and conception

There are many, many foods that people simply say, oh, it's an aphrodisiac.

And I think his word choice is really interesting, because he's not outright saying salt isn't aphrodisiac, just that there's not enough there, which to my mind

So under the doctrine of signatures, anything plant-based that's of a phallic shape is going to work for an aphrodisiac process

That turns on the belief, in Shakespeare's time and later, that potatoes were actually aphrodisiacs.

And actually, when you read a lot of history books on this subject, historians will tend to just talk about aphrodisiacs using modern technology.

But you're about to be bombarded with the most ludicrously, ridiculously long list of foods that function as aphrodisiacs.

The other reason I didn't write about chocolate explicitly is because, as hopefully you'll see, chocolate is one of the most famous aphrodisiacs

So hopefully, given what I've just said, you can already start to see how aphrodisiacs would be a quite different substance to what we know them to be

But interestingly, when these writers include two separate chapters, and they have aphrodisiacs that link to this kind of quotation, they will often write that both kinds of drugs

But for ease of what we're talking about today, these are my nice little semi-fake categories of aphrodisiacs.