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82 Chapter 2
and mea sur ing the pepper and grains purchased by the people.” Milagu
from this time is thought to have been sold as far as Greece, and it was
this spice that set the taste for pepper. Thus, when Portuguese and Italian
sailors found a slightly different but similar spice, now one linked to the
ginger family, they termed it “milagu” or “meleguette,” and the meleg-
uetta coast was born.
29
At markets near where their ships docked, Eu ro pe an traders con-
versed with African merchants, gaining information on the cultivation
and uses of grains of paradise (see Figure 2.4). The Dutch traveler Pieter
de Marees published the fi rst account of life on the Gold Coast, now
modern- day Ghana, in 1602. He confi rmed that by this point people
near the Atlantic Coast were cultivating grains of paradise:
Grain of Manigette . . . is mostly found in Africa, in an area which is
named after it. It grows in Fields, like Rice, but does not become as tall.
It is also sown like corn; its leaves are thin and narrow, and where the
Grain grows like hazelnuts, it is as big as the cobs of Maize. It is reddish
in color. Once the shells have been removed, one fi nds the Grain inside,
covered with husks, in separate compartments, like [a] pomegranate.
30
An engraving included with his publication portrays a collection of
plants in a fi eld, almost as if depicting a plot of intercropped vegetables,
which included an accurate repre sen ta tion of a grains of paradise bush
that de Marees may have seen himself or heard about (see Figure 2.5). De
Marees also explained how women who had just given birth used grains
of paradise to restore their energy. In contrast to Eu ro pe an women who
lay in bed after giving birth, women on the Gold Coast did not “use
Midwives to lift and put them into the child- bed and to make them
feel comfortable. They just walk away, make a mixture or spoonful of
Malaguetta or Grain, which they drink.”
31
While de Marees undoubtedly
overestimated the constitution of African women, it does indicate the
early modern use of A. melegueta to manage labor pains.
Through the tragedy of the trans- Atlantic slave trade, knowledge of
grains of paradise extended to the Americas during the Middle Passage.
The link between slavery and grains of paradise was in evidence on the
slave ships themselves. In 1760, the Danish slave merchant Ludewig
Ferdinand Romer explained in his Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea:
A ship’s medicine chest should only contain anti- scorbutics and anti-
venerics. Should the slave fall victim to the [endemic] illnesses of the
land, such as worms, etc., a couple of the female slaves can be allowed to
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Take Grains of Paradise for Love 83
take over, after we have supplied them with mallaget and piment, palm
oil, and citrons, from which they can prepare medicines, and the sick
will feel well afterward.
32
On the ships that carried both slaves and peppers, knowledge traveled
as it was embodied in young women and men who still remembered the
uses of the plant.
Seeds of the grains of paradise were made available to enslaved in-
dividuals once they landed in the Americas, allowing them to shape a
healing plant diaspora on a second continent. It is unlikely that people
carried the peppers on their bodies across the Atlantic, but they did
know how to cultivate them. Presumably, a few coveted pepper pods in
Figure 2.4 A possible venue for exchange of grains of paradise and related information in Ghana:
“Market of Cabo Corsso,” from Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom
of Guinea (1602). Key as given in de Marees’s account: “A is the house or residence of the Captain
of this place. B is the Hut or Barn in which the Captain stores his Millie. C is the Market for Bananas
and fruits, as well as the place where they sell meat. D is the Lodge where Peasants come and sit in
the Market with their pots of Palm wine. E is the Chicken Market. F is the Fish Market. G is the wood
Market. H is the Rice Market, where Millie is also sold. I is the place where fresh water is for sale. K is
the early Market, where they sell Sugar- cane. L: here Holland Linen, which the Peasants have brought
ashore from the Ships lying opposite their quarter, is mea sured out in fathoms and remea sured. M is
the place where women from the Castle de Mina come and sit in the market with their Kanquies. N is
the sacrifi cial table of Fetisso, their God. O are the Dutchmen who come to the Market to buy some-
thing. P is the Captain’s guardsmen, walking with their weapons. Q is the road to the sea- shore. R is the
road to the Castle de Mina. S is the road to Foeta [Fetu] and other Inland Towns.” (Note: there is no
item J in the fi gure.) (Source: reproduced with permission of the British Academy.)
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84 Chapter 2
circulation could have provided the necessary seeds to jump- start cultiva-
tion. As the Romer reference indicates, slave ships did carry the peppers
on board. Geographer Judith Carney has argued that grains of paradise
appeared in private plots of those of African descent in the Americas,
particularly in Northeast Brazil, Martinique, and perhaps the Carolinas
in the United States (where enslaved individuals cultivated rice using
techniques they brought from West Africa; see Figure 2.6).
33
In Brazil from the fi fteenth century, the Portuguese forced enslaved
individuals into mining and agriculture, with captives being primarily
male and purchased mainly from ports in what is today Nigeria, Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo, and Angola.
34
In Brazil, the name for grains
of paradise (A. melegueta) is “atarê,” derived from the Yoruba term used
in Nigeria. Strong Yoruba connections with Northeast Brazil included
the use of grains of paradise in animist religious ceremonies. During
Candomblé events, priests and priestesses sprinkled powdered grains of
paradise, pimenta da costa, in their intercessions with spirits. Grains of
paradise were also used in Brazil to treat impotence.
35
Bahia in Brazil and
the Bight of Benin in Nigeria are only 2,000 miles apart. Afro- Brazilians
Figure 2.5 Tropical plants illustrated in Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold
Kingdom of Guinea (1602). Key as given in de Marees’s account: “A. is Sugarcane. B. is Maize or Turkish
Wheat. C. is Rice. D. is Millie, which they use as their Corn to bake bread with. E.: On this shrub grow
small red and black peas, which are nicely speckled with colours. F. is the size of Parsley. G. is Ginger.
H. is a tree on which big Beans, not less than a palm in circumference, grow. I. is Grain or Manigette.”
(Source: reproduced with permission of the British Academy.)
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Take Grains of Paradise for Love 85
came to manage trade between these two points, including slaving, and
they established permanent settlements along the West African coast.
These activities could have fostered continuous knowledge of grains of
paradise, commerce in African harvests of the plant, or the prevalence of
the Yoruba term. (In Brazil and Portugal, the term “malagueta pepper”
refers to a South American red chili pepper that grows above the ground,
Capsicum frutescens var. malagueta).
In Guyana, Dutch settlers brought enslaved individuals from Africa
to work on sugar plantations, as the Portuguese had in neighboring Brazil.
A by- product of this activity was the cultivation of grains of paradise.
The uses were medicinal as well as corporal. Slave masters in Guyana were
known to cane enslaved individuals and then chew grains of paradise,
which they rubbed in their victim’s eye. In the nineteenth century, some
of the earliest fresh samples of the pepper to make their way to En gland
did so from Guyana, preserved in sealed bottles of alcohol. Apparently,
Figure 2.6 Collection points of 423 medicinal recipes using grains of paradise. Key: Closed
c ircle = recipe collected 1200– 1500; light circle = recipe collected 1501– 1800; open circle = recipe
collected 1801– 2009. (Source: Author’s research.)
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86 Chapter 2
cultivation was associated with those of African descent. One pharmacist
from Guyana explained to pharmacists in En gland that “the plant . . .
is cultivated in Demerara by many of the old African negroes, and the
dried seeds sold to the Druggists in Georgetown, as grains of paradise,
with which they appear to be identical. The seeds were probably car-
ried there originally by the Africans.” He further explained that an
Afro- Guyanese cultivated “perhaps, a dozen plants or so in the garden
attached to his hut. . . . The plants formed very pretty garden fl owers.”
36
By the 1800s, the pungent peppers found markets in the United King-
dom, where brewers used them to spike beers and porters. Under King
George III, grains of paradise emerged as an illegal additive in alcoholic
beverage. The use of this West African spice preoccupied commissions
of inquiry in the British Parliament, with brewers quizzed on their use
of the imported spice through the 1820s. From Dublin to London, in-
vestigators seized quantities of drugs and other “deleterious” substances
used to enhance beers, including opium, grains of paradise, and sulphate
of iron. On November 24, 1813, town offi cials convicted one brewer
of “having in his custody 44
½
pounds of grains of paradise,” as well as
quantities of ground ginger, caraway seeds, and “orange- powder” (tur-
meric). They fi ned others for using banned ingredients thought to cover
the taste of defective ales. From 1815 to 1818, brewers including Webb
and Ball, Swain and Sewell, and John Mitchell paid fi nes of up to £200 or
fl ed the country for using ginger, guinea- pepper, opium, honey, or Cocu-
lus India in their breweries.
37
Despite efforts to ban the illicit spice, interest in grains of paradise
in Britain did not wane in the early nineteenth century. Indications of
the rise in popularity of grains of paradise in Britain can be seen from
textual references. Between 1600 and 1815, the term “grains of paradise”
only rarely appeared in published English- language books, but from
1815 to 1915— the period of increased colonization along the African
coast— it appeared at least two to four times as frequently as “cardamon”
and “tumeric” and had virtually supplanted “malegueta.”
38
Botanists
working in Ghana have noted a decrease in recorded exports of grains of
paradise from the Gold Coast colony from the 1880s. They have argued
that this decrease could be attributed to the rise in cultivation of the
more lucrative crop, cocoa, which was introduced to Ghana from the late
nineteenth century. The shade created by cocoa trees would have killed
grains of paradise intercropped around them.
39
Finding new markets, exports of grains of paradise have continued
to this day from ports in West Africa and the Ca rib be an. The description
for Sam Adams Summer Pale Ale makes reference to these pungent, and
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Take Grains of Paradise for Love 87
possibly potent peppers: “Complex yet refreshing, this tangy American
wheat ale features a slight citrus note. Brewed with malted wheat, lemon
zest and Grains of Paradise, a once- forgotten but fl avorful African brew-
ing spice. The perfect drink for a warm summer day.”
40
Advertisements
for the beer claimed that grains of paradise “according to medieval legend
were thought (erroneously) to have aphrodisiac properties.” Thus, the late-
twentieth century marked a fourth rise in interest in grains of paradise in
Eu rope and North America, following earlier peaks in the 1200s, 1500s,
and 1800s.
These brief indications of the dispersal of grains of paradise reveal the
extent to which West African medicine spread to other parts of the world
through Saharan trade, Atlantic commerce, and slavery. Oral accounts and
ethnographic evidence further suggest the diffusion of herbal recipes on
the African continent. And, if claims in the PeyaBiotech patent discussed
in the coming paragraphs are to be trusted, grains of paradise mixed with
alcohol improve chances in lovemaking, providing an explanatory frame-
work for the historical interest in beers made with the spice- drug.
TAKING HERBAL RECIPES TO MAKE DRUGS
Grains of paradise recur in treatments across continents, especially in
remedies to cure impotence. Who discovered that grains of paradise
reverse impotence? A deep analysis of recipes associated with grains of
paradise indicates the spread of not only the pepper but also knowledge
of its uses. This includes herbal inventions related to grains of paradise
in areas where it grows wild and in cultivated plots, as well as herbal in-
ventions in areas where the pepper has been acquired in markets. Grains
of paradise have been used not only as cures for impotence, but also as
treatments for wounds, joint pains, menstrual pain, ailments of the nose
and throat, and intestinal parasites.
Within Africa, knowledge of the use of grains of paradise as an aphro-
disiac followed trade routes, circulating through longstanding exchange
and migration between Morocco, Mali, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cam-
eroon, Republic of Congo, and the Demo cratic Republic of Congo. Other
important centers of use include Sierra Leone and Liberia, but modern
documentation is scarce as a consequence of recent po liti cal instability
from protracted wars. Is it possible to gauge where the idea that grains of
paradise stimulate sexual desire began? Was it simultaneously discovered
in multiple places, or did recipes travel with each market transaction and
each new seedling?
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88 Chapter 2
To answer these questions, besides studying recipes gleaned from
family, friends, in for mants, and early modern and colonial herbal phar-
macopeia, I turned to the tremendous publications of the Scientifi c and
Technical Research commission of the Or ga ni za tion of African Unity,
now African Union (AU). The commission has conducted surveys of
medicinal plant usage in various African countries since 1968. A fi rst
outcrop of this work was volume one of the African Pharmacopoeia,
published in 1985, with several pharmacopoeias produced for par tic-
u lar countries in the 1990s and early 2000s. Edited by the Beninese
botanist Edouard Adjanohoun, these surveys depended heavily on co-
lonial botanical reports published from the late 1920s to early 1950s.
However, the AU committees also introduced critical data through me-
dicinal recipes gathered from recent fi eld research and gave attribution
to specifi c healers, botanists, and other plant experts, including their
residential addresses. A similar set of pharmacopoeias, also edited by
Adjanohoun, have been published for Francophone countries through
the auspices of the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique
(ACCT, now Organisation International de la Francophonie, or OIF).
41
In my analysis, I differentiated the recipes by plant part used, re-
gion, in for mant, place of publication, time of collection, longitude and
latitude, scientifi c and vernacular names, medicinal claim, and actual
recipe. I developed a list of fi fty- one symptom codes that I used to de-
termine which recipes could be associated with treatments for male
and female reproductive disorders. The resulting maps show the wide
distribution of this relatively open healing plant diaspora (Figures 2.2,
2.6, and 2.10). As we shall see, at least thirty of these therapeutic recipes
specifi cally claim to treat impotence or sterility.
Herbal Inventions for Impotence and Infertility
The successful production of offspring is a major preoccupation in
West African societies. Not surprisingly, a variety of treatments to im-
prove sex life, with provocative names like “man power powder” and
“herbal Viagra,” populate the arsenals of traditional healers and herbal
medicine sellers. These products are not protected through patents
but rather are made from carefully guarded secret recipes. Some might
be registered with national offi ces for managing foods and drugs, as
tonics to treat general weakness, and may even have been tested at
national laboratories for toxicity. They may be prepackaged in plastic,
cardboard, or glass, or they may be available for purchase in powder or
enema form.
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Take Grains of Paradise for Love 89
Herbal medicine from different places can incorporate a universal in-
gredient as well as plants available at a par tic u lar location. Given the di-
versity of ingredients, it is a complicated thing to understand what makes
a remedy “work.” It is also unclear when recipes came into existence. We
can control for a common additive— for instance A. melegueta, which
herbal specialists believe indicates for erectile dysfunction. Consider, for
example, the existence of twenty recipes for treating impotence collected
between 1977 and 1997 from North and West Africa, all of which in-
clude grains of paradise. They point to a range of indigenous treatments
that used grains of paradise, complemented with a wide variety of local
botanicals.
In Salé, Morocco, the plant specialist Abdallah L’Asiri shared a pur-
ported aphrodisiac with a collaborative research team from Morocco
and Japan in 1982. His remedy included seeds and fruit of seven plants:
celery, onion, rape, carrot, galingale, myrobalan, and grains of paradise.
He recommended that his patients mix the powder with honey and take
a spoonful each night to improve their love life. Alternatively, L’Asiri
recommended just the seeds of grains of paradise to treat impotence.
Around the same time, Rahhal Ben El- Hajj Mohamed in Marrakech, Mo-
rocco, described his personal recipe for ras l-hanut, a spice mixture used
frequently in North African cooking, which included slightly different
ingredients, including four types of pepper, one of which was grains of
paradise, as well as cardamom. He explained that it was useful in stimu-
lating sexual desire in both men and women.
42
In 1986, in Avévé, Togo, the traditional healer Amana Ossou Bossou
revealed his treatment for encouraging sexual desire in men to fellow To-
golese working with a research team of the ACCT. He also used seeds of
grains of paradise but incorporated the root of Byrsocarpus coccineus in a
mixture to be taken once a day for three days. In Ezimé, Togo, the healer
Olilé Doh presented his recipe for curing male impotence: the seeds of
one pod of grains of paradise, and this time, the root of Lonchocarpus
sericeus. As opposed to a powder mixed with honey, as in Morocco, the
Togolese healers recommended the aphrodisiac be served as a beverage.
43
In 1988, in the city of Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, the plant
specialist Pierre Matsimouna incorporated three or four seeds of grains
of paradise in a solution of red wine, which he recommended to those
who did not feel up to sexual activity. Albert Ngalouako, also from the
Republic of Congo, suggested that seeds of grains of paradise be mixed
together with the entire root of Desmodium and sipped in an infusion
of red wine before a sexual encounter. In 1989, the healer Dan Benoit of
Abomey, Benin, would burn kola nuts and mix them with chicken and
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90 Chapter 2
grains of paradise to combat impotence. In 1993, in southern Nigeria,
the botanist Maurice M. Iwu recommended the fresh fruit or the root of
grains of paradise as an aphrodisiac and sexual stimulant. Other recipes
to treat sexual incapacity collected from West Africa involved chewing
seeds of grains of paradise along with several other plants, including
bark of Annona senegalensis and Pausinystalia johimbe, and dried stems of
Penianthus longifolius.
44
This selection of recipes shows that grains of paradise featured in
a variety of treatments designed for men and women who sought to
improve their love life, which might have been compromised through
erectile dysfunction, lack of desire, or lack of sperm (see Figure 2.10).
Recipes from Morocco incorporated honey or celery, whereas those from
former French colonies like the Republic of Congo infused ingredients
in imported wine from red grapes. The recipes included grains of para-
dise as a common element, alongside other ingredients available to the
healer in his location. They hint at everyday practices of real people
with specialized plant knowledge. Unfortunately, we do not have writ-
ten documentation of recipes as they evolved for these towns since the
1200s. Thus, such “traditional” recipes suggest how grains of paradise
could be imbued with a par tic u lar medicinal meaning for many people
across a wide geographic terrain at the end of the twentieth century.
Although it is not possible to identify how all these individuals came to
value grains of paradise for their benefi ts in lovemaking, the ethnomedi-
cal evidence indicates the wide diffusion of this belief over time and
space. Presumably, individuals found themselves inheriting therapies
from family members, which they adjusted and reevaluated. Commer-
cial ties between ethnic communities may have fostered exchange, as
well as informal conversations among friends.
Arguably, grains of paradise are integral to oral culture in West Af-
rica, traveling in the pockets of guests and galvanizing conversation
itself. Among the Igbo communities made famous in Nigerian writer
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, grains of paradise were fun-
damental to religious and social life. They were given to women in the
community at the birth of a child; men and women who came visiting
were served kola nuts on the same tray with grains of paradise; and at
healing shrines, it was chewed together with kola, and devotees spat
the chewed cellulose onto the ground around statues of the gods and
ancestors. When Okonkwo, the protagonist of Achebe’s novel, partakes
of both kola and alligator peppers with friends by the early twenti-
eth century, he is implicated in larger networks of trade with a long
history.
45
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Take Grains of Paradise for Love 91
A similar analysis might be made for other therapies included in the
400 recipes for grains of paradise that I collected from published and oral
sources. Individual recipes provide points in a complex web of historical
and geographic trends. To express the innumerable uses of the pepper
in herbal medicine across the continent, the Nigerian botanist Ebenezer
O. Olapade pointed to the Yoruba proverb “Atare kii die so tire laabo,”
meaning “The fruit of atare always have complete seeds within its pod.”
46
Next, I examine efforts to make drugs from the spicy seeds, before con-
sidering other uses for grains of paradise and the vagaries of pop u lar and
specialist knowledge.
Laboratory Rats and Male Volunteers in Paradise
At the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon during the late 1990s, a
group of researchers set out to prove whether two pop u lar aphrodisiacs
really worked. Pierre Kamtchouing led the investigations at the Animal
Physiology laboratory in the Faculty of Sciences. For eight days, he and
his team fed a watery solution of either grains of paradise (A. melegueta)
or West African pepper (Piper guineense) to a collection of male rats raised
especially for the experiment. Then to see what would happen, the re-
searchers placed the animals into a clear plastic cage with female rats
injected with hormones to send them into heat. They made excruciat-
ingly detailed observations on the behavior of the animals over the next
sixty minutes. In an article published in 2002 in the Journal of Behavioral
Pharmacology, the Cameroonian scientists showed that the male rats who
digested either peppery solution rather than plain water copulated more
frequently and powerfully with the female rats allocated for this most
tantalizing study.
47
The experimenters brought traditional medicine into the laboratory,
a common practice for African scientists looking for inspiration. Some-
where in the capital city of Yaoundé, they acquired fresh pods of the
two peppers, which were identifi ed at the University herbarium and
dried under controlled conditions. Presumably, the laboratory techni-
cians produced dry peppers without mold, nor did the ubiquitous white
powdery mildew enhance the effects of the grains of paradise. Through
careful scientifi c language, the Cameroonian researchers further coded
pop u lar plant medicine in the guise of the laboratory. For instance, they
used more than fi fteen “pa ram e ters of the copulatory behaviour” of the
rats to track statistical changes in “genital grooming.” Despite the broad
claims of the study, the researchers included only fi ve rats in each of the
groups fed distilled water, grains of paradise, or West African pepper.
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