Photo Credit: Franco Christophe
From the crushed remains of the Spanish Fly (Blister Beetle) to the spleen and bone marrow of a murdered boy, people have been seeking for centuries the perfect Love Potion to ensnare an unwitting victim into a web of their personal twisted love design. Poisonous plants and herbs such as the datura plant and the Mandrake root were mixed with some truly disgusting human/animal body parts and fluids in the bizarre belief that these potions would conjure up the most divine of human emotions: love.
Body Parts vs Pheromones
Believe it or not, some cultures preferred a concoction brewed with the necks of 
lizards drowned in urine, fingernails, umbilical cords, viper’s blood and witches hair, over your basic herbal or plant potions. I once had a housekeeper from the Philippines who informed me that adding menstrual blood to a man’s coffee would ensure his lifelong and undying devotion. She was eventually let go…
Modern science has homed in on pheromones as a major catalyst for attraction among not only humans but animals and insects as well. The pheromone is similar to a hormone: the difference is that it works outside of the host body to induce activity in others such as sexual arousal. Lesser species like insects are believed to use pheromones to actually communicate with one another.
“What’s love got to do, got to with it?”
The bizarre, chilling, and even murderous extremes people have historically taken in the pursuit of “romantic love” leaves one with much to ponder. Love comes in so many delightful and pure forms: a mother’s love, our love for our pets, the patriotic and honorable love of one’s country, the love of family and siblings, the love of nature, the love of all things beautiful and divine. To try to capture the essence of such a sublime emotion by means of butchery, torture, deceit, poisons and potions, leads one to seriously consider that perhaps these pathetic, grasping, conniving pseudo-chemists had confused “love” with nothing more than common, uncensored and unslakable lust. -Christine McKellar