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Previous Volume 359:438-439 July 24, 2008 Number 4 Next

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By Pope Brock. 324 pp., illustrated. New York, Crown, 2008. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-307-33988-1.

In Gaetano Donizetti's opera L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love), the itinerant Dr. Dulcamara peddles a "marvelous elixir that awakens love," and in a vocally demanding patter song proclaims that his "superhuman elixir can, in a moment, not only cure the ills of love, but make the penniless rich." Donizetti's audience surely knew — perhaps some from their own experience — that the origin of the character's name, the plant Solanum dulcamara (commonly called woody nightshade or bittersweet), is an herbal remedy for impotence.

The doctor's elixir stands in a long line of concoctions meant to arouse the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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