Note 395 — Chapter V · RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE
George Herbert Ely translation
People still went to witches and “Egyptians” to get antidotes for love, or love philtres, or simply potions for securing good luck. These potions were mischievously used, as morphine is to-day: it was what they called selling the devil in bottles. Rabelais shows us his Pantagruelion: Porta, Cardan, and other grave occultists or physicians have handed down several of the prescriptions then current: opium was generally used to produce delightful dreams; nightshade produced smiling illusions. The principle of love philtres was derived from remote antiquity, and apparently M. Brown-Sequard has borrowed something from them.