Toxicology ancient Greeks

Natural and synthetic chemicals affect every phase of our daily Hves ia both good and noxious manners. The noxious effects of certain substances have been appreciated siace the time of the ancient Greeks. However, it was not until the sixteenth century that certain principles of toxicology became formulated as a result of the thoughts of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim-Paracelsus (1493—1541). Among a variety of other achievements, he embodied the basis for contemporary appreciation of dose—response relationships ia his often paraphrased dictum "Only the dose makes a poison."... 

In the Western world the ancient Greeks were probably the first to dissociate medicine from magic and religion. Important and valuable contributions of several thinkers improved the quality of human health and our understanding in toxicology. Some of the important ones include ... 

Ebers Papyrus, 1500 bc the oldest well preserved medical document from ancient Egyptian records dated from approximately 1500 bc contains 110 papyrus pages on anatomy and physiology, toxicology, spells, and treatment. Homer, 850 bc wrote of the use of arrows poisoned with venom in the epic tales of The Odyssey and The Iliad. The Greek word toxikon is arrow poison. 

POISON has been used for execution, murder, and assassination and in warfare since ancient times. As we saw earlier, the word toxicology is derived from the Greek words for the poison with which arrows were tipped. The killing of Rasputin in 1917 was a clear case of the deliberate use of poison for a politically motivated murder, but where the assassins may not have had enough knowledge of the dose of cyanide necessary (see case notes pp. 215-16). 

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