King Mithridates VI (132–63 BCE)
THE UNIVERSAL ANTIDOTE. To protect himself against all poisons and reptilian venoms—and he had reason to be concerned—King Mithridates concocted a single all-purpose universal antidote that he drank daily in increasing doses. This mithridatium or mithridate, variously described as consisting of some 36 to 65 ingredients, survived into the twentieth century (albeit with modifications), becoming the oldest prescription in history.
King Mithridates VI was ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus (northeastern Turkey) from 120 until 63 BCE. During the early decades of his rule, Mithridates significantly and ruthlessly expanded the size of his state into Asia Minor and Greece at the expense of the Roman Empire. During one such campaign in 88 BCE, his armies killed 80,000 Roman citizens and up to 150,000 of their allies. After his defeat at the hands of Pompey the Great in 63 BCE, Mithridates attempted to poison himself, his wife, and children. As the story goes, his antidote protected him alone from the effects of the poison but not against the sword, his backup choice of suicide.
We have not abandoned the notion of a universal antidote. For many years, families were instructed to keep a mixture of activated charcoal, magnesium oxide, and tannic acid at the ready in their first aid kits in the event of accidental poisoning. It is now known that both this recent antidote and Mithridates’ theriac are ineffective, and the search for an effective universal antidote continues.
The English poet A. E. Houseman makes reference to the Theriac of Mithridates in his collection A Shropshire Lad (1896): “They put arsenic in his meat / And stared aghast to watch him eat; / They poured strychnine in his cup / And shook to see him drink it up.”
SEE ALSO Ipecac (1682).
Theriac was an ancient multi-ingredient preparation intended as a cure against the bites of venomous serpents and wild animals—and later under Mithridates VI’s direction, an all-purpose poison antidote. By the Middle Ages, theriac was considered a panacea. A sample of the preparation is contained in this eighteenth-century French pharmacist’s urn.