Sexy Lettuce

Italian ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorin has solved the puzzle of why lettuce sap has been used in ancient Rome to dampen sexual desire, and in ancient Egypt to inflame sexual desire.

In ancient Greece and Rome, the milky sap from lettuce has been used as a sedative and painkiller. In the 1st Century AD, the Roman army used it to drive out sexual dreams of soldiers. Pliny the Elder wrote about its ability to dampen sexual desire a hundred years later. However archaelogical evidence also shows that it was used as an aphrodisac in ancient Egypt, in an offering to the fertility and sexuality god Min. For more than a hundred years archaeologists have wondered why a vegetable used to calm dreams was associated with the exuberant sexuality of Min.

Samorin tested the hormone-like phytochemicals in lettuce sap, and found that the effect depends on the dose. The milky sap comes from cutting the stem of the plant.

A small dose of one gram of lettuce sap, causes the calming and pain killing effects to appear, because of the presence of lactucin and lactucopicrin.

At the higher doses of two to three grams, the stimulating effects of cocaine-like tropane alkaloids dominate, acting like an aphrodisiac.

So the Romans had a small amount of lettuce sap to calm down, and the Egyptians used a larger dose of wild lettuce sap, to get excited.

Further tests are needed to confirm Samorin's results at of the Civic Museum in Rovereto. Luckily Lettuce is legal, grows wild in several countries, and is safe to eat.