This late 15th-c illustration shows a man preparing a mixture called “Theriac,” which for over a millennia was perhaps the most valued curative substance (or so it was advertised) across Eurasia. You can see the snakes unfurling under the man’s feet: they’re there representing the serpentine venom the ancient recipe demanded. Another crucial ingredient was opium. Theriac was thought to have been the invention of a ruler named Mithridates, who had long fought against his powerful Roman neighbors in the first century BCE. Supposedly, Mithridates kept a bevy of prisoners upon whom he conducted medical experiments, intentionally poisoning them and then experimenting with different antidotes to see if they could be cured. When the Roman Empire finally defeated Mithridates, they aimed to get his most successful medicines, and archaeological sites at Pompeii among others have suggested that within a century, Theriac (originally called Mithridatium) had infested the medical markets as fast as the diseases it was said to have treated. The ingredients tell much about medical science from this time: venom was included because of a widespread homeopathic belief that including a small amount of a toxin could make one immune to larger doses of the poison. Opium was of course the ingredient that brought physical relief. Cultures from the Ancient Romans to the Islamic Caliphates, from Tang China through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance reveared Theriac, and herbalists constantly tinkered with the recipe, adding ever-more exotic ingredients, which kept prices high and the aristocracy the main consumers of history’s longest-lived (pun there) panacea.
Source(s): Information from “Mithridates of Pontus and His Universal Antidote,” by Adrienne Mayor, in _Historu of Toxicology and Environmental Health_, 2014. First image is 1491 Hortus Sanitatus of Jacob Meydenbach. Second image shows the enduring appeal of Theriac. In fact, one could still find it for sale in a Roman pharmacy in 1984, (!) writes Adrienne Mayer.
