ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the new approaches, considerations, and discussions of poison in Latin medical literature of the fourteenth century. It shows how and why Latin physicians adopted a new approach to toxicology, cultivating a new genre of medical text in which they endeavored to understand. The chapter describes the nature of venenum, to craft firmer definitions and guidelines as to what should and should not be admissible in medical pharmacy, as well as to establish the place and role of venenum in the natural world. It begins not with medical literature focused on poison, but with treatises devoted to theriac–the famed panacea for poison–that provided a new textual space for discussions of poison to develop. The chapter focuses on Pietro d'Abano's seminal work on poison, De venenis atque eorundem commodi sremediis from around 1309, which significantly reshaped the ways physicians addressed the topic of poison.
