Commentaries on the Six Books of Dioscorides on Medical Matter

There are also countless kinds of animals that kill men instantly by bite or sting. Indeed, scorpions, geckos, and venomous spiders live and wander in our houses; since these animals have no regard for persons or places, they betake themselves everywhere and prepare hiding places and nests. Thus it happens that, being sometimes disturbed by unaware men, they inflict poison with a sting and drive those struck to their ruin. Furthermore, asps, vipers, and other venomous reptiles lie hidden now in gardens and pleasure-grounds, now in vineyards, now in meadows, and in other places among flowers and herbs; if these are trodden upon even a little with the foot, or are provoked, they immediately inflict a fatal wound, from which those struck die instantly or shortly after, unless they are succored as soon as possible with antidotes. There is also the dog, who, although he be most familiar to man, yet when he is driven into madness, he usually brings those he has bitten to a horrible kind of death.

When many of the ancient sages, whom we mentioned above, had diligently examined and rightly weighed this, having searched more deeply into the powers of plants, aromatics, and all other simple medicines, they composed various antidotes against poisons and the bites of venomous animals. Following in their footsteps, Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus and of various nations (of whom we also made mention before), judging that he had not acquired enough glory for himself from the fact that he alone among mortals (as Pliny relates) spoke twenty-two languages—so that he addressed no man of his subject nations through an interpreter—nor from the fact that he had gained very many victories, was singularly curious about medicine for his even greater and immortal glory, and devoted the greatest study to understanding the science of herbs.

He seems clearly to have attained both of these: for from his knowledge of herbs he discovered types of antidotes, one of which he composed that still retains his name and consecrates its author to immortal fame. By the use of this antidote, that king had so strengthened his body and rendered it safe from poisons that, when he preferred to end his life rather than suffer servitude to the Romans, he is said to have attempted it several times with poison in vain. Mithridates was imitated by Andromachus, the equally most learned and most refined physician of the Emperor Nero. He indeed discovered the composition of theriac, which, by the testimony of Galen, preserved from poisons not only very many Roman emperors and countless princes, but also all others who took it opportunely. Wherefore in the time of Galen, this antidote was prepared by him magnificently and splendidly, the emperors so commanding.

I shall pass over Attalus, King of Pergamum, of whom mention was also made by us before; because the same zeal for compounding antidotes possessed him, he is celebrated with the highest praises by Galen himself. Nevertheless, our own age does not receive or perceive the same fruit or utility from the use of these antidotes as antiquity perceived. For although we have their names handed down in records, and even the antidotes themselves are found prepared in the shops of the druggists, yet these do not provide those effects and powers which [their names...]