Everything is kin of mine.
Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes."
As late as 1787 "mithridate" was the name for an antidote against poison included in the London pharmacopœia. In Jonson's 'Every Man in his Humour,' Kitely, thinking he is poisoned, calls for mithridate and oil. It was composed of many ingredients and given in the form of electuaries. In our modern pharmacopoeias we have plenty of antidotes against virulent poisons; e. g., atropine for the deadly amanita mushroom. And counter-poisons are often used, as the tincture of foxglove for aconite, atropine for morphia, or morphia for belladonna. According to the tradition, Mithridates gradually inured his system to counter-poisons, and became poison-proof. At any rate, Emerson uses him for his metaphor, which, in untropical speech, is this: "lam tired of the nambypamby and goody-goody; give me things strong and rank; give me evil for a change and a spur.
"Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,