The Book of Theriac (Kitāb al-Diryāq), or Book of Antidotes

The detail of this miniature depicts two plants that are necessary for making a ‘theriac’, an antidote made from many ingredients. The plant’s name is next to it and written in cursive naskhi. Above, inside a frame, the same name in Kufic script forms the title. Note that the word theriac, from the Greek therion ( ) ‘wild animals’, here refers to snakes and their venom.

The author of this treatise is unknown. To lend the work greater prestige, he placed it under the authority of Galen, a Greek doctor during the second century AD, whom the Arabs of the Middle Ages preferred to Hippocrates. The work is specifically presented as the translation of the text of a treatise by Galen executed by John the Grammarian in the sixth century in Alexandria: The Treatise of the Electuaries (‘selected’ ingredients). The example in the BnF, dating from 1199, was probably produced in the north of Iraq, judging by the style of the illustrations. We know the name of the copyist, who was probably also the miniaturist, as the writing is associated with the images: Muhammad ibn Abī l-Fath ‘Abd Al Wāhīd ibn Abī l-Hassan ibn Abī l-Abbās Ahmad. He may have been a Shiite scribe who was commissioned by his nephew.

The iconography is rich, but intermittent. After the frontispieces, nine doctors from Antiquity—specialists in theriacs (including Galen and Andromachus)—are depicted, followed by scenes illustrating the discovery of the antidotes. The other plates, which are more scientific in nature, represent plants, minerals and animals that are used in the formulation of the remedy. Another copy dating from the thirteenth century is held in Vienna[1].

The theriacs were the masterpieces of the pharmacopoeia and originated from many traditions. Poisons and antidotes already appeared in texts from Mesopotamia and pharaonic Egypt. In India, in the era of the Brahmans, the Āyurveda, or ‘Science of the prolongation of life’ tackled this subject, as attested in the medical synopses of Charaka and Suçruta (second and fifth centuries AD), which were known to the Arabs. But it was the Classical Greeks who originated the theriacs of the Muslim and Christian worlds. For example, Nicander of Colophon, physician at the court of King Attalus of Pergamum (ca. 240 BC), was the author of a treatise, in the form of a poem, on snakebites; there was Mithradates VI, king of Pontus (120–63 BC), whose antidote was codified by Galen; and, above all, Andromachus, Emperor Nero’s physician, who perfected Nicander’s recipe, and gave his name to a famous theriac. With its collection of around sixty substances, including dried and ground snakeskin and opium, it used honey as an excipient. There were other theriacs, based on the work of Galen (in particular, from his De Antidotis), or that of his commentators from Alexandria. The treatise we are examining is a good example. The great Arab physicians, who were often translators, such as Ibn Māsawayh, Hunayn ibn Ishāq, Al-Rāzī, and Ibn Rushd (Averroès), were all interested in antidotes.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Venice possessed the secret recipe of a theriac, thanks to its connection with the East. But this ‘fine Venetian theriac’ had a competitor in the form of a French version from Montpellier, a town where the medical know-how from al-Andalus was perpetuated. The Montpellier theriac was prepared under the supervision of magistrates and doctors. Eventually, due to its high price and many ingredients, the theriac was considered a universal panacea. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was prescribed in Europe as a tonic and a tranquilizer. It was listed in the French pharmacopoeia until 1884.