Daily camera., 1897-01-02
LOVE PHILTERS.
Regular Articles Of, Trade In New
York Shops.
Secret Stores Where Sleeping Potions
and Other Quack Nostrums Are
Sold in q Surreptitious
Manner.

Love potions and love charms are
regular articles of trade in many of the
6queer-looking little shops on New
York's great east side. They are to be
found for the most part in the dirty
looking groceries and the overcrowded
dry goods shops.
There is also constant demand
for sleeping potions" as well as for
various odd poisons whose use is little
understood by the medical profession
here. Perhaps if these poisons could be
traced their use might solve many an
east side mystery that has baffied the,
police. Your east side. foreigner has
been in the habit of buying such things
in obscure stores in the cities and towns
where she used to live and the demand
is still supplied in one wav or another
in New York.
The writer discovered one of these
secret stores in walk on the east side.
1t was connected with little dry goods
shop east of Third avenue. His atten
ton was attracted to a collection of
amber beads, which on the east side
and other parts of the town are freely
sold to anxious parents, who tie them
about the necks of their children TO
keep off Group. The proprietor of the
shop, who seemed to be Roumanian,
with half Russian type of face, picked
Aup a peculiar amber ring, which he
offered for sale as Glove ring"
"In the east" he said. "a number of
ilrugs are used for the purpose of eX
citing love in a cold and careless lover.
Some of these drugs are made into
medicines, or love potions,' to be
Swallowed, but there are many love
icharms' which can be made up with
jewelry or worn on the body. Amber is
firmly believed by the peasants in
southern Europe to have peculiar pow
ers in causing one who wears it to be
loved. 1t is made into lockets, or set in
Ia ring, or carried in a bag around the
neck.
amber is also distilled into an oil
and is used as one of the ingredients of
love potions,' which are given in
liquid form to be taken internally. 1t
is a brown -colored liquid of hot taste
and strong, disagreeable odor 1t is
poisonous in large doses, but in small
mounts is freely used in southern
countries. 1t is frequently rubbed in
the back with wonderful effect. Most
- these love potions, or love phil
, : rs" continued the old Roumanian
y, orekeeper, "must have originated in
'iental countries, where such things
ave been in common use from the earli-
It times.
"Another new drug used to stimulate
the emotions of love is salt of gold
originally discovered by the old al
chemists in their attempts to make gold
out of silver or the other baser metals
1t was long ago used as secret ''love
medicine" and is now used by physi-
!, clans for that purpose. 1t acts like
strychnine, which is one of the most
powerful drugs known, but it also has a
special action in exciting the passions.
One of the oldest of "love potions" is
called "the essence of pearls" 1t dates
back to the time of Antony and Cleo
patra.
"Among the German peasants" con-
tinued the old Roumanian, "a number
of strange superstitions has been
handed down, which are practiced even
among the Germans in New York city
to-day, at least among the more ignor
ant. A stick of lovage root is supposed
by them to be efficacious in exciting
owe. 1t is used by young wives or un-
5 married girls who have doubts about
their husbands or lovers. The lovagc
root is made into powders and baked in
cakes given to the men to eat, or put
into wine or beer for them to drink. An
old. superstition teaches that bats
blood is an excellent antidote for an
4Rathetic lover.
ntmeg has been thought to have
r powers. A diet of mushrooms
Fuffles is recommended by the Ger
Il as a stimulant to the emotion of
love-"
The old Roumanian storelleeper had
a curiously carved wooden chest con-
tanning several little metal TASKS with
some of these Glove potions," which be
had brought from his native land He
elso had recipes for The manufacture of
Others, but these he declined to show.
He seemed sproud of his reputation,
which had brought him patrons not
,bstly from his own people, hut people
o. various nationalities, even including
. r- u