From The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, a fourteenth-century encyclopedia by Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri, an Egyptian scholar. The book was published this month by Penguin Classics. Translated from the Arabic by Elias Muhanna.

Take equal parts of carrot seed, arugula seed, autumn crocus, and cottonseed kernels, and knead them together in elecampane water or arugula water. A suppository can be made out of that, and it will raise a mighty erection.

Take one dirham’s worth of the scorched skin of a jackal, the scorched hooves of a goat, the scorched hoof of a donkey, scorched thorn apple, a…