54 
HISTORY OF PHARMACY. 
after the death of Mithridates, was to cause it to be sought 
for among the papers of this prince. 
They, in fact, found the formula amidst private memoirs, 
which for the most part had relation to medical observa- 
tions, explanations of dreams, and pharmacological re- 
searches. Independently of the formula of this celebrated 
electuary, they found another which they considered as his 
true counterpoison. It is composed of the leaves of rue 
pounded together with salt, the kernels of nuts and ripe 
figs.* 
Pompey hastened to translate, through his manumitted 
slave Loenus, all the books of receipts belonging to Mithri- 
dates, and brought them to Rome as one of the trophies of 
his victory. The decided taste of Mithridates for pharma- 
ceutical knowledge naturally turned the mind of his con- 
temporaries to analogous researches, and evidently contri- 
buted to the progress of Materia Medica. Nearly all the 
empirics founded their glory in devising new compounds 
and new antidotes to which they affixed their names. Cra- 
tevas dedicated to Mithridates his work upon vegetables, 
and gave the name of this sovereign to two plants ; one is 
our agrimony, ( Jlgrimonia Eupatorium, L.;) the other is 
the Mithridatiurn, {Erythronium dens cards, L.) 
Pliny mentions a Babylonian by the name of Zachalias, 
who dedicated to him a work upon precious stones. 
The electuary of Mithridates is composed of fifty four 
substances; it was the most complicated of all the antidotes 
then known. It is known that the celebrity of this com- 
position existed for nearly twenty centuries; it only ceased 
since a few years past to be an article of our dispensatories, 
* Bis denum rutse folium, salis et breve granum 
J u gland esq ue duas totidem cum corpore ficus, 
Hoec oriente die pauco conspersa Ljaeo, 
Sumebat 
(2. Serenus^Sammonicus.) 
