Poisons, Dioscorides

Henbane is a biennial herb growing wild in Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, and cultivated in several other countries (Robbers et al. 1996). The ancient Egyptians mention its use in the Ebers Papyrus, written circa 1500 B.C.E. (Shultes and Hofman 1992). It was also mentioned in writings by the ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides for its medicinal uses. It has been suggested that the Oracle of Delphi inhaled smoke from henbane seeds to induce a prophetic trance. The plant is poisonous to livestock animals, as indicated by its common name henbane, and by its botanical name hyoscyamus, meaning "hog bean."... 

The so-called arsenic of the Greeks and Romans consisted of the poisonous sulfides, orpiment and sandarac, mined with heavy loss of life by slave labor (2). Both Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides were familiar with orpiment and realgar (sandarac) (70). The latter mentioned that Arsenicum and Sandaracha occur in the same mines, that sandarac has a brimstone-like odor, and that these two ores are roasted in the same manner (71). 

Arsenikon and sandarach mean to Dioscorides, as to Theophrastus, respectively orpiment and realgar. The former, yellow scales or plates, is used in medicine as a depilatory and a caustic. Heated alone, or with charcoal, it loses color and leaves a mass which cooled and powdered is a deadly poison (arsenious oxide). Curdled milk is said to be an antidote. Sandarach, red like cinnabar (dragon s blood, he means), behaves when heated like arsenikon, and in general has properties similar to that substance. He notes that it gives a sulphureous odor when roasted. 

Poisonous substances described by Dioscorides include conium, strychnia, colchicum, aconitum, the poppy, hellebore, and the mandragora. From the last named, a wine is made which produces so heavy, long continued and unconscious a sleep that physicians perform difficult operations by its use. Pliny also says that it is given before incisions or punctures are made in the body, in order to ensure insensibility to pain. 

Among his medical treatises, two articles on poisons and on wines manifest a comprehensive knowledge, though they contain no new facts, and indeed draw largely, directly or indirectly, from Pliny and Dioscorides. 

An important milestone was the Materia Medica, a text produced by Dioscorides in ad 50 in which he classified poisons as animal, plant, or mineral, described them, and included drawings. This remained one of the major sources of information on poisons for sixteen centuries. Dioscorides also recognized the importance of emetics, which induce vomiting, in the treatment of poisoning. 

Moonstone and gypsum, it is certain that the former has great use in healing, while the latter is poisonous. A piece of Moonstone the size of a filbert is often used for dysentery. It also stops hemorrhage, and is a good dentifrice. Consult Dioscorides and Avicenna. 

The same substance is found in the sea, as sailors and merchants have told me, and in the Nile, if their reports be true also in marshes by the sea. In the Nile Dioscorides says that it assumes the colour of the crocus, and it is purged to replace the red with a white colour. It is redolent of rank poison, and is very unpleasant. It dissolves in oil, but not in water. Dioscorides states whence it comes, describes its qualities, also the adulterated variety. He enlightens us on its medicinal uses. See also Cassius Felix on Alosachne. Pliny regards it as a substance of divers natures, and says that it smells differently both from Salt and Sea-spume. It is found in Egypt, is carried by the Nile, and floated about thereon. It is so well known in Saxony that it enters into medicines for almost every disease. I know of a most excellent lady who perished by excessive use of it. 

Following the work of Nicander, which included the beginnings of a scheme for identifying toxic agents by means of the symptoms they produce in human victims, a system of toxicology was developed between the second century bc and the first century ad. The Roman naturalist and historian Pliny the Elder (23/24-79 ad) described the biological effects of poisonous plants and animals in his Historia Naturalis. A contemporary, Pedanius Dioscorides, developed a classification scheme for poisons based... 

Mineral poisons were also well known in the ancient world. In particular, the ores and compounds of arsenic, antimony, copper, mercury, and lead were familiar to many cultures. Pseudo-Dioscorides detailed the poisonous effects of arsenic (meaning sometimes the sulfide, sometimes the white oxide), litharge (red lead or lead oxide), cinnabar (mercuric sulfide), and white lead (lead acetate). Hippocrates, Nicander, Dioscorides, Galen, and Paul of Aegina wrote clinical accounts of lead poisoning, of which there were occasional epidemics, and miners were known to be at risk from the fumes created by smelting processes. 

In his 1548 commentary on Dioscurides, Pietro Mattioli worried that faulty transmission of classical medicinal knowledge had given rise to misidenti-fications of materia medica, leading physicians unwittingly to prescribe poisons as pharmaceutical remedies. See Pietro Mattioli, II Dioscoride dell eccellente Dottor P. A. Matthioli (Venice, 1548) and Richard Palmer, Pharmacy in the republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century, in The... 

A species of what is commonly known as hemp, it was well known in the ancient world. It was used for hber, food, and medicine and in social and religious rites. The Assyrians had several names for it. Gan zi gun nu, translated as the dmg which takes away the mind, was one of them. Azallu, another name, was a dmg for a yet unidentified disease translated as hand of the ghost. It was also a dmg for the poison of all limbs (presumably arthritis). The Egyptians used it as an oral medication for mothers and children, possibly during childbirth, and Dioscorides recommended it for ear pain and for inflammation. 

This elixir was made from the climbing plant Asclepias acida ( AA ), which is milkweed. This is a similar herb to the European swallowwort or Vincetoxicum hirundanaria. It is a medicinal antidote whose name means defeat the poison. The first century CE Greek physician and pharmacologist, Dioscorides, called the plant the dog strangler and wrote that the leaves it mixed with meat could kill dogs, wolves and foxes.In the Switzerland, swallowwort is called the Master Herb and in. Austria Jewish herb or White Cross herb. 

Greco-Roman era to ca. 200 CE Acute abdominal distress, vomiting, muscle pain, paralysis, hallucination death in extreme, untreated cases Acute lead poisoning with acute encephalopathy and peripheral neuropathic features Hippocrates Nikander Galen Vitruvius Dioscorides Pliny the Elder Major (1945), Waldron (1973), Nriagu (1983a,b 1985), Relief and Cilliers (2006)... 

Perhaps the earliest written record of the use of medicines is the Ebers papyrus, from about 1500 B.C., which describes more than 800 recipes, some of which contain substances today known to be toxic, including hemlock, aconite (ancient Chinese arrow poison) opium, and metals, including lead, copper, and antimony (6). Use of mercury in medicine in ancient Greece was described by Dioscorides, and by the Persian Ibn Sina of Avicenna (980-1036), with use against lice and scabies. He also reported observations of chronic mercury toxicity (7). 

Arsenic is another metal known to the ancients with toxic as well as medicinal properties. The sulfides of arsenic, which were roasted, were described by Dioscorides in the first century A.D. as medicines as well as colors for artists. There is evidence that arsenic was used as a poison in Roman times (poisonous nature of arsenic compounds, which were used in various recipes. Paracelsus, the Swiss physician, used arsenic compounds as medicinal agents (9). Arsenic was widely used as a pesticide in the form of calcium arsenate following the turn of the 20 century. 

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