Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

clothes and head-bindings, and their perilous crawling on all fours,
and walking now upright with no anxious nurse at hand, chew its
sprays of baleful flowers through witlessness, since they are just
bringing to light the incisor teeth in their jaws, at which time itching
assails their swollen gums.’
120–63 BC Mithridates VI, King of Pontus 18 , had concocted by his physician
Zopyrus an antidote to any possible poison, ‘Mithridatium’, which the
king is said to have taken daily in gradually increasing doses and
thereby developed multivariant tolerance such that, when later he
was captured and imprisoned and tried to commit suicide, he was
immune to the action of the poison (Hayes, 2001). It seems strange
that having concocted an antidote and used it prophylactically that he
should contemplate using a poison; it shows little faith in his own
antidote. The king had tested it in ‘clinical trials’ on convicted
criminals and slaves. It contained costmary, sweet flag, hypericum,
gum, sagapenum, acacia juice, Illyrian iris, cardamom, anise, Gallic
nard, gentian root and dried rose-leaves, poppy-tears, parsley, casia,
saxifrage, darnel, long pepper, storax, castoreum, frankincense,
hypocistis juice, myrrh, opopanax, malabathrum leaves, flower of
round rush, turpentine-resin, galbanum, Cretan carrot seeds, nard,
opobalsam, shepherd’s purse, rhubarb root, saffron, ginger,
cinnamon. These are pounded and taken up in honey
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridate. Accessed 29th June 2009).
Andromachus the elder (c60 AD), physician to Emperor Nero,
added squill, viper flesh and opium, and called his preparation
‘Theriaca Andromachi’.
When Mithridatium was used against poisoning, a piece the size of
an almond was given in wine. In other affections an amount
corresponding in size to an Egyptian bean is sufficient. The ingredients
changed over the years: Celsus used 36 ingredients; Pliny said 54,
Andromachus 64, Servilius Damocrates 48, and Galen 77 (Nutton,
1995). The different formulas and ingredients for ‘Mithridatium’ led to
different names being given for them. Galen said that ‘Mithridatium’ had
41 ingredients and that another version, now called ‘Galene’, had 55
constituents. ‘Galene’ subsequently was called ‘Theriaca’ and this term
finally became ‘Venetian Treacle’ (Griffin 2004), the word ‘treacle’ being
a derivative of ‘Theriaca’. It was also used for malaria and gradually
became a universal panacea. The use of this medication continued
18 Pontus = region on the south coast of the Black Sea