When Pompey had finally defeated Mithridates he took possession of a quantity of the tyrant’s papers at Nicopolis, and it was reported that among these were his medicinal formulas. Mithridates meanwhile was seeking help to prosecute the war. But his allies, his own son, and his soldiers were all tired of him. In his despair he poisoned his wife and daughters, and then took poison himself. But according to the legend, propagated perhaps by some clever advertising quacks in Rome, he had so successfully immunised his body to the effects of all poisons that they would now take no effect. Consequently he had to call in the assistance of a Gallic soldier, who despatched his chief with a spear. The story of his defeat and death are historic; the poison story is legend which, however it was originated, was no doubt good value in the drug stores of Rome, where the confection of Mithridates was soon sold. As will be stated immediately there is abundant reason to believe that the alleged formula which Pompey was said to have discovered and to have had translated was devised at home.
In 1745 when a new London Pharmacopœia was nearly ready for issue, a scholarly exposure of the absurdity of the compound which still occupied space in that and in all other official formularies, along with its equally egregious companion, Theriaca, was published by Dr. William Heberden, a leading physician of the day, and though it was too late to cause the deletion of the formulas in the edition of 1746, that was the last time they appeared in the Pharmacopœia, though they had been given in all the issues of that work from 1618 onwards. No better completion of the history of this preparation can be given than that which Dr. Heberden wrote 165 years ago. The King of Pontus, he assumed, like many other ancient royalties, was pleased to affect special skill in the production of medicines, and it is not surprising that his courtiers should have flattered him on this accomplishment. Thus the opinion prevailed among his enemies as well as in his own kingdom that his achievements in pharmacy approached the miraculous. His conqueror, Pompey, apparently shared the popular belief, and took uncommon care in the ransack of his effects, after Mithridates had been compelled to fly from the field, to secure for himself his medical writings. According to Quintus Serenus Samonicus, however, the Roman general was amused at his own credulity when, instead of a vast and precious arcana he found himself in possession of only a few trifling and worthless receipts.
Dr. William Heberden. 1710–1801.
(From a mezzotint in the British Museum.)
The anticipation of some marvellous secrets was so universal, and the Roman publishers so well disposed to cater for this, that it is not to be wondered at that a confection of Mithridates and stories of its miraculous power soon found their way into literature. A pompous formula, which it was professed had been discovered among the papers of Mithridates captured by Pompey came to be known under the title of Antidotum Mithridatium. It is noteworthy that Plutarch, who in his life of Pompey mentions that certain love letters and documents helping to interpret dreams were among these papers, makes no allusion to the medical recipe; while Samonicus states explicitly that, notwithstanding the many formulæ which had got into circulation pretending to be that of the genuine confection, the only one found in the cabinet of Mithridates was a trivial one for a compound of 20 leaves of rue, 1 grain of salt, 2 nuts, and 2 dried figs. So that, Dr. Heberden remarks, the King of Pontus may have been as much a stranger to the medicine to which his name was attached as many eminent physicians of this day are to medicines associated with their names.
The compound, made from the probably spurious formula, however, acquired an immense fame. Some of the Roman emperors are declared to have compounded it with their own hands. Galen says that whoever took a proper dose in the morning was ensured against poison throughout that day. Great physicians studied it with a view of making it, if possible, more perfect. The most important modification of the formula was made by Andromachus, Nero’s physician, who omitted the scink, added vipers, and increased the proportion of opium. He changed the name to Galene, but this was not retained, and in Trajan’s time the name of Theriaca was the accepted designation, a title which has lasted throughout the subsequent centuries.
Dr. Heberden’s criticism of the composition is as effective now as when he wrote, but it should be remembered that in his day there was a Theriacal party in medicine; to us the comments seem obvious. He points out that in the formula as it then appeared in the Pharmacopœia no regard was had to the known virtues of the simples, nor to the rules of artful composition. There was no foundation for the wonderful stories told concerning it, and the utmost that could then be said of it was that it was a diaphoretic, “which is commonly the virtue of a medicine which has none.”
But even if undesigning chance did happen to hit upon a mixture which possessed such marvellous virtues, what foundation was there, he asked, for believing that any other fortuitous concourse of ingredients would be similarly successful? This preparation had scarcely continued the same for a hundred years at a time. According to Celsus, who first described it, it consisted of thirty-eight simples. Before the time of Nero five of these had been struck out and twenty new ones added. Andromachus omitted six and added twenty-eight; leaving seventy-five net. Aetius in the fifth century, and Myrepsus in the twelfth gave very different accounts of it, and since then the formulas had been constantly fluctuating. Some of the original ingredients were, Dr. Heberden said, utterly unknown in his time; others could only be guessed at. About a century previously a dispute about Balm of Gilead, which was one of the constituents, had been referred to the Pope, who, however, prudently declined to exercise his infallibility on this subject.