Theriaca.
Theriaca was invented by Nero’s physician, Andromachus, and was devised as an improvement on Mithridatium which until then was the great antidote in Roman pharmacy. The most important addition which appeared in the new formula was the introduction of vipers. Andromachus named his electuary “Galene,” which meant tranquil, probably to suggest that it was a soothing, anodyne medicine. It soon, however, acquired its permanent name, for it is referred to as Theriaca by Pliny, who would have been a contemporary with Andromachus. Pliny, it may be remarked, was rather contemptuous of the polypharmaceutic compounds which were then becoming so popular. They were devised, he says, “ad ostentationem artis;” just to “show off,” as we should say.
Andromachus (or it may have been his son, a physician of the same name) wrote his formula, and described the virtues of his compound in Greek elegiac verses which he dedicated to Nero, and which Galen has preserved. The object of giving the formula in verse was that it should be less easy to modify it. The enumeration of the medicinal properties of the antidote left very little room for any other remedy. First it would counteract all poisons and bites of venomous animals. Besides, it would relieve all pains, weaknesses of the stomach, asthma, difficulty of breathing, phthisis, colic, jaundice, dropsy, weakness of sight, inflammation of the bladder and of the kidneys, and plague.
Galen, after describing its alexipharmic properties, states that he tested it by causing a number of fowls to be dosed with it. To these he brought others to which no theriaca had been given. The poison was administered to all. The fowls to which the theriaca had been given all survived, and all the others died. Galen’s encomiums on this compound were no doubt largely responsible for the marvellous reputation it enjoyed all through the centuries in which his authority was accepted. He declares that it resists poison and venomous bites, cures inveterate headache, vertigo, deafness, epilepsy, apoplexy, dimness of sight, loss of voice, asthma, coughs of all kinds, spitting of blood, tightness of the breath, colic, the iliac passion, jaundice, hardness of the spleen, stone, urinary complaints, fevers, dropsies, leprosies, the troubles to which women are subject, melancholy, and all pestilences.
Down to the seventeenth century these virtues were almost universally accepted, and many were the learned treatises written to explain its action; how one drug toned down the effect of others, and how the whole formed a sort of harmony in medicine. At the same time most of the old masters in pharmacy fancied they could suggest some improvement, and the original formula was modified in scores of ways.
In addition there arose new electuaries, modelled more or less closely on theriaca, but perhaps devised for some special complaints, and bearing the names of their authors. Many of these also attained to considerable fame.
For some centuries the theriaca made in turn at Constantinople, Cairo, Genoa, and Venice was in such reputation that customers would have it so branded. Ultimately the last-named city secured almost the monopoly of the manufacture. A reference to its production there occurs in Evelyn’s Diary, dated March 23, 1646. Evelyn writes: “Having packed up my purchases of books, pictures, casts, treacle, &c. (the making and extraordinary ceremony whereof I had been curious to observe, for it is extremely pompous and worth seeing), I departed from Venice.”
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth English apothecaries began to claim that they could make the confection as well as their Italian contemporaries. Some curious documents illustrating their confidence were given in an interesting research by Mr. W. G. Piper, published in The Chemist and Druggist, March 15, 1880. He quotes from William Turner, “the learned divine, daring Protestant, and first English botanist,” the title of a work on the virtues and properties of the great Triacle (published in 1568 but not now known), and also a few paragraphs from a later volume on the same subject in which, after describing the method of making the remedy, he says: “Wherefore if there be any Apothecaries in London that dare take in hande to make these noble compositions they may know where to haue them.” It appears that Hugh Morgan, the Queen’s apothecary, accepted the challenge, for in a pamphlet by him (1585) he insists that his product has been compared with other “theriacle” brought from Constantinople and Venice, and has been better commended. “It is very lamentable to consider,” he writes, “that straungers doe dayly send into England a false and naughty kinde of Mithridatium and Threacle in great barrelles more than a thousand weight in a year, and vtter ye same at a lowe price for 3d. and 4d. a pound, to ye great hurt of Her Maiesties subjects and no small game to straungers purses.”
Preparation of Theriaca.