Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

ecovered after a dose of a drug.’
49 BC Titus Lucretius Carus wrote the poem De Rerum Natura [On The
nature of things] that includes the following lines:
I will unfold, or wherefore what to some
Is foul and bitter, yet the same to others
Can seem delectable to eat,–why here
So great the distance and the difference is
That what is food to one to some becomes
Fierce poison, as a certain snake there is
Which, touched by a spittle of a man, will waste
And end itself by gnawing up its coil.
Again, fierce poison is the hellebore
To us, but puts the fat on goats and quails.
That thou mayst know by what devices this
Is brought about, in chief thou must recall
What we have said before, that seeds are kept
Commixed in things in divers modes…
(The Internet Classic Archives)
One is tempted to believe that the first passage suggests a personal
idiosyncrasy, but it may refer to either a dose problem where tolerance
has developed or the large differences in dose necessary for some
drugs ‘It may therefore be assumed that in a group of 100 persons
there will be at least a fourfold difference between the doses required to
produce equal effects upon the most susceptible and least susceptible
individuals.’ (Wilson & Schild, 1952). The second passage is the first
recording of the bane of toxicology in that the actions of drugs in
animals do not necessarily foretell their action in man.
43–17 BC Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’, ’Or perhaps the juice of some herb caused
it?’
Ovid's, ‘Tristia’ (II.296) ‘Eripit interdum, modo dat medicina
salutem, quaeque iuuet, monstrat, quaeque sit herba nocens.’
[Sometimes it rescues, but medicine gives health, it shows that
always it may help, or always it may be a harmful plant].
‘Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.’
‘Medicine sometimes grants health, sometimes destroys it, showing
which plants are helpful, which do harm.’
42 BC ‘Some remedies are worse than the disease.’ in ‘Sententiae’
[Opinions] by Publilius Syrus.
29 BC Aegrescitque medendo [And people fall ill from being cured] Vergil,