ABSTRACT
The balm of Gilead and the electuaries, mithridatium and therica, testify to the antiquity of therapeutics. The Biblical balm of Gilead was a resin extracted from the balsam tree and used as a counter-irritant to relieve pain (Rosner 1993). Mithridatium is ascribed to King Mithridates VI of Pontus in Asia Minor in the first century BC, and therica was the invention of Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero a century later (Watson 1993). Both these remedies became so popular that they were regarded as virtual panaceas. It was William Heberden, the Elder (1710-1801) of digital joint node fame, who was the first to denounce the “farago” of nonsense in a reasoned attack published as a short essay in 1745 (Heberden 1929). However, it was not until 1788 that these concoctions were removed from the London Pharmacopoeia, and not until 1884 from the last of the European Pharmacopoeias, that of France. Heberden, however, introduced his own form of therica, known as Mistura Ferri Aromatica and popularly as Heberden’s ink, which remained in the British Pharmacopoeia until 1890 (Buchanan and Kean 1987). It might be thought that such therapies were of the forgotten past, but the reverse is the case. During the past decades there has been a continuing rise in complementary medicine. In a 1997 survey in the United States 42% of 2055 adult responders reported using some type of alternative therapy during the previous year (Eisenberg et al. 1998). Such therapy has been shown to contain various contaminants, which may be harmful (Goldman and Myerson 1991; Shaw 1998; Ernst 1998).
