Manual of toxicology : reprinted from Witthaus' and Becker's medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus.

  • Rudolph August Witthaus
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Manual of toxicology : reprinted from Witthaus' and Becker's medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine and toxicology / by R.A. Witthaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/1280 (page 9)
    lus^ remained the standard work upon the subject down to the sixteenth century, contained a treatise on poisons and their antidotes.^ The search for antidotes was probably coeval with the dis- covery of the deleterious effects of poisons. The earliest refer- ences to the use of counter-poisons are those contained in the Odyssey® and in the Shastras.^ Theophrastus and Nicander also direct what remedies shall be used to combat the effects of poisons. It was in the first century b. c., however, that the idea of an- tagonizing the action of one poison by another, or by habitua- tion, was first developed. According to Galen® Zopyrus, a physician of Alexandria, invented an antidote which he recom- mended to Mithridates, king of Pontus; and Celsus refers to a similar composition which the same physician prepared for one of the Ptolemies. The extended acquaintance of Mithridates with the action of poisons and of their antidotes is frequently referred to in classical literature, and it is related that when (in B. c. 63) he wished to commit suicide, his constitution had been so long inured to antidotes that poison had no effect upon him and he was compelled to have a mercenary dispatch him with his sword.® The Mithridatic antidote is described by Celsus^ as consisting of thirty-six ingredients. As, according to Pliny,® Pompey caused a translation of the work of Mithridates on poisons to be made by Lenaeus, it is not improbable that the Mithridatic served as a model for the “Theriac” of Andro- machus, and the numerous other theriacs and alexipharmacs, the use of which continued down to the beginning of the eigh- teenth century. The earliest reference to criminal poisoning in Roman his- * First published in Italian, 1544. Many later editions in Latin, of which the most esteemed is that of Venice, 1565, fob ^ Printed as the sixth book, irtpl 8rfKr]TripL(i)v <papp.dKO}v, in the Aldine, 1499, i518, Cologne, 1529, and Paris, 1549, editions; and in that of Sara- cenus as separate treatises, “Alexi- pharmaca” and “Theriaka.” ® See p. 6. * See p. 5. 150. Ed. Kiihn and Celsus, v., 23, s. 2, p. 94. ® Appian, “Mithridat.,” 107-111; Dion Cass., xxxvii., 3, 11-13; Plut., “Pompey,” 41; Pliny, “Hist. Nat.,” XXV., 3; Gellius, “Noct. Att.,” xvii., 16. Also Martial: Profecit poto Mithridates ssepe veneno. Toxica ne possent sseva nocere sibi. ’Celsus, V., 23. Galen, “De Antid.,” ii., 9, says forty-four, and Pliny, “Hist. Nat.,” xxix., 8, fifty- four.