Beckmann says[477] that the pigmentarii dealt in medicines, and sometimes sold poison by mistake.
The seplasiarii sold veterinary medicines and compounded drugs for physicians.[478]
The pharmacopolæ, according to Beckmann, were an ignorant and boasting class of drug-sellers. The medicamentarii seem to have been a still more worthless class, for in the Theodosian code poisoners are called medicamentarii.
A great number of the medical plants mentioned by Pliny, Dioscorides, and other writers on materia medica were used for quite other purposes than those for which we employ them now. Some drugs, however, were apparently given on what we must admit to be correct scientific principles. Thus Melampus of Argos, one of the oldest Greek physicians of whom we have any knowledge, is said to have cured Iphiclus of sterility by administering rust of iron in wine for ten days.
He gave black hellebore as a purgative to the daughters of Proetus when they were afflicted with melancholy. Preparations of the poppy were known to have a narcotic influence, and the uses of prussic acid—in the form of cherry laurel water—stramonium, and lettuce-opium were well understood. Squill was employed as a diuretic in dropsy by the Egyptians.
The following list from the article on “Pharmaceutica” in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities contains probably the titles of all the ancient treatises on drugs that are extant: “1. Περὶ Φαρμάκων, De Remediis Purgantibus; 2. Περὶ Ἑλλεβορισμοῦ, De Veratri Usu (these two works are found among the collection that goes under the name of Hippocrates, but are both spurious); 3. Dioscorides, Περὶ Ὕλης Ἰατρικῆς, De Materia Medica, in five books (one of the most valuable and celebrated medical treatises of antiquity); 4. id. Περὶ Εὐπορίστων, Ἁπλῶν τε καὶ Συνθέτων, Φαρμάκων, De Facile Parabilibus, tam Simplicibus quam Compositis, Medicamentis, in two books (perhaps spurious); 5. Marcellus Sideta, Ἰατρικὰ περὶ Ἰχθύων, De Remediis ex Piscibus; 6. Galen, Περὶ Κράσεως καὶ Δυνάμεως τῶν Ἀπλῶν Φαρμάκων, De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis et Facultatibus, in eleven books; 7. id. Περὶ Συνθέσεως Φαρμάκων τῶν κατὰ Τόπους, De Compositione Medicamentorum secundum Locos, in ten books; 8. id. Περὶ Συνθέσεως Φαρμάκων τῶν κατὰ Γένη, De Compositione Medicamentorum secundum Genera, in seven books; 9. id. Περὶ τῆς τῶν Καθαιρόντων Φαρμάκων Δυνάμεως, De Purgantium Medicamentorum Facultate (perhaps spurious); 10. Oribasius, Συναγωγαὶ Ἰατρικαί, Collecta Medicinalia, consisting originally of seventy books, of which we possess now only about one third; 11. id. Εὐπόριστα, Euporista ad Eunapium, or De facile Parabilibus, in four books, of which the second contains an alphabetical list of drugs; 12. id. Σύνοψις, Synopsis ad Eustathium, an abridgment of his larger work in nine books, of which the second, third, and fourth are upon the subject of external and internal remedies; 13. Paulus Ægineta, Ἐπιτομῆς Ἰατρικῆς Βιβλία Ἕπτα, Compendii Medici Libri Septem, of which the last treats of medicines; 14. Joannes Actuarius, De Medicamentorum Compositione; 15. Nicolaus Myrepsus, Antidotarium; 16. Cato, De Re Rustica; 17. Celsus, De Medicina Libri Octo, of which the fifth treats of different sorts of medicines; 18. Twelve books of Pliny’s, Historia Naturalis (from the twentieth to the thirty-second), are devoted to Materia Medica; 19. Scribonius Largus, Compositiones Medicamentorum; 20. Apuleius Barbarus, Herbarium, seu de Medicaminibus Herbarum; 21. Sextus Placitus Papyriensis, De Medicamentis ex Animalibus; 22. Marcellus Empiricus, De Medicamentis Empiricis, Physicis, ac Rationalibus.”
Although the Greeks and Romans knew little of chemistry as we understand the term, they must have possessed considerable skill in the art of secret poisoning, either with intent to kill or to obtain undue influence over certain persons.
Poisonous drugs were used as philtres or love-potions, and we know from Demosthenes[479] that drugs were administered in Athens to influence men to make wills in a desired manner. Women were most addicted to the crime of poisoning amongst the Greeks. They were called φαρμακίδες and φαρμακευτρίαι. By the Romans the crime of poisoning was called Veneficium; and here again, as in other times and places, it was most usually practised by women. It lent itself to the weakness of the gentler sex, who could not avenge their injuries by arms, and there is little doubt that many women were as unjustly suspected of poisoning as we know they were of witchcraft in an ignorant age when pestilence and obscure diseases filled the minds of the people with fear and suspicion. Thucydides tells us[480] the Athenians in the time of the great pestilence believed that their wells had been poisoned by their enemies. When the city of Rome was visited by a pestilence in the year 331 B.C., a slave girl informed the curule aediles that the Roman matrons had caused the deaths of many of the leading men of the State by poisoning them. On this information about twenty matrons, some of whom, as Cornelia and Sergia, belonged to patrician families, were detected in the act of preparing poisonous compounds over a fire. They protested that they were innocent concoctions; the magistrates compelling them to drink these in the Forum, they suffered the death they had prepared for others. Locusta was a celebrated female poisoner under the Roman emperors. She poisoned Claudius at the command of Agrippina, and Britannicus at that of Nero, who even provided her with pupils to be instructed in her deadly art. Tacitus tells the story,[481] Suetonius says,[482] that the poison she administered to Britannicus being too slow in its action, Nero forced her by blows and threats to make a stronger draught in his presence, which killed the victim immediately. She was executed under the emperor Galba.
Clement of Alexandria refers to the Susinian ointment in use in his time, which was made from lilies, and was “warming, aperient, drawing, moistening, abstergent, antibilious, and emollient,” a truly marvellous unguent indeed if it possessed only half of these virtues. He tells of another ointment called the Myrsinian, which was made from myrtle berries, and was “a styptic, stopping effusions from the body; and that from roses is refrigerating.”[483]