Yes, Love Potions Were Real, And They Were Disgusting Cleo Egnal THE HISTORY OF DOING ITNEXT LIST

Yes, Love Potions Were Real, And They Were Disgusting
Cleo Egnal

THE HISTORY OF DOING ITNEXT LIST

Voting RulesVote up the disgusting love potion you most want to give your crush/enemy.
Love potions are powerful stuff—if they work, that is. They're incredibly popular in pop culture, depictions of witchcraft, and have their roots in history as far back as Biblical times. The idea of a love potion is idyllic: give the object of your desire a little vial to ingest, and they will become yours forever. However, the reality of these love potions was a little more complicated and a lot more disgusting than that. Up there with gross foods from colonial America, aristocratic France, and even the 1950s, the ingredients in some of these ancient, medieval, and even more modern love potion recipes range from the icky, like insects, to the straight-up horrid, like crushed bones and menstrual blood. Be sure to venture into this article on an empty stomach.

One Potion Required Human Cadavers
As popular as animal remains were in potions, human cadavers were more taboo, but still utilized. These included bone smashed into a powder, hair, and the menstrual blood. The potions allegedly worked best if there were ingredients from both romantic parties involved.
One specific recipe called for the spleen and bone marrow of a murdered boy, so sometimes these things got pretty specific. The use of menstrual blood in numerous love potions hints at the fact that it was mostly women who used love potions, and some ended up being convicted of witchcraft as a result.