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"The fly is actually a winged beetle with a greenish-metallic color, and its potency-enhancing effects have long been known." In antiquity, the beetles were crushed into a powder that was taken or mixed into a meal by a man Emperor Nero have mixed the drug into the food of the (then current) imperial family to be able to use the orgasms so ignited later against their participants.
In fact, Cantharidin, an ingredient of the Spanish fly, is a potent poison. Among other things, it irritates the urinary tract, which can cause an erection. However, sexual desire does not increase it. But when the libido is there, it can give men an extended love play. Or a painful chronic erection, liver poisoning, circulatory collapse and kidney failure. Unfortunately, the Spanish fly is slightly overdosed. Already 30 milligrams are deadly. Cantharidin easily follows the "little death" orgasm with the great death.
In any case, the effect of the insect was well known when the pharmacist Pierre Jean Robiquet (1780-1840) from Paris isolated the substance Cantharidin exactly 200 years ago from the animal and examined. Robiquet's ambition was sparked by the mishap that befell the Napoleonic troops in Egypt. They fed on certain frogs, which in turn consumed Spanish flies and stored their poison without side effects. Actually, Cantharidin serves the insect just as protection against predators. But as often happens in the evolutionary arms race, some robbers adapt to the weapons of their prey "(Wolfgang W. Merkel, in: Welt, 13.8.2010 |.
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