'The Cure for Every Plague and Poison' by Karen Maitland

The Apothecary (circa 1752)

Artist: Pietro Longhi (1701-1785)

Of all the dangers that daily surrounded our ancestors the one that seem to strike dread into the hearts of the upper classes was the fear of being poisoned, and throughout history the search for a universal antidote against poison obsessed them as much the search for gold, the alchemist's stone or the Holy Grail.

Legend has it that the first universal antidote, known as Mithridate, was invented by Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (NE Turkey), who reigned from 120BCE, enthroned when he was just thirteen. He was terrified of being assassinated by poisoning, as other members of his family had been, and attempted to create an antidote to all poisons and venoms, as well as to the ‘systemic poisons’ which developed inside the body and were thought to be the cause of illness.

He first experimented with a number of single ingredients as antidotes to individual poisons by trying them out on condemned criminals. Then combined all the effective substances into one antidote, to produce a universal prophylactic against poisons and plagues, which he consumed daily. He believed that the interaction between the blended ingredients as they matured resulted in far greater healing properties than consuming any of the individual antidotes alone. Legend has it that it proved so effective that when, in 63BCE, he eventually tried to commit suicide using poison to avoid the humiliation of being taken prisoner, the poison had no effect and he was forced to ask his bodyguard to stab him.

Image on a coin of Mithridate VI

His records fell into the hands of the Roman conquerors of Pontus and Roman medici began to use them. Mithridate contained opium, myrrh, saffron, ginger, cinnamon and honey, along with some forty other ingredients including many herbs, roasted copper, sea squills and beaver castoreum. Andromachus, Nero's physician, is said to have removed some ingredients such as lizard from Mithridates’ concoction and added others, particularly viper's flesh. He called his new recipe ‘Galene’, ‘tranquillity’. Galene became known as ‘theriac’. Andromachus ‘improved’ upon mithridate by bringing the total number of ingredients to sixty-four.

Theriac took at least forty days to make and was supposed to be left for twelve years to mature, though the Emperor Marcus Aurelius apparently couldn’t wait that long and consumed after it had matured for only two months without any harm.

Sea Squills or Sea Onion (Drimia maritima)

Photo: Zeynel Cebeci

Theriac was usually swallowed with wine or dragon water (distilled from dragon-wort, polygonum bistorta, also known as Snake-weed or Bistort), but could instead be rubbed on the skin or eyes, which was advised particularly when being administered to babies and young children. It was used to treat malaria and also a plaster to heal venomous stings or bites. The 11th century Saxon leech book of Bald claims that in 9th century, Abel the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent theriac to King Alfred the Great and the book also includes a recipe for theriac.

The writings of the Greek and Roman physicians and alchemists re-emerged in Italy via Islamic scholars, who introduced them to the great medical universities such a Salerno. By 12th century, theriac was being produced in Venice and exported all over Europe. In England, it was called ‘Venetian treacle’, treacle being a corruption of theriac. It was used widely in Europe in the Middle Ages in an attempt to ward off or cure the Black Death.

Dragon-wort (Polygonum bistorta)

Photo: Muriel Bendel

But the cities of Bologna, Constantinople (Istanbul), Cairo, Genoa, Padua and Milan also competed to produce the best theriac from their own recipes and such was its value and importance that theriac was prepared in public with elaborate ceremony, so that potential customers could be assured that all the ingredients claimed to be in it had been added. If it failed to cure, the apothecary who had made it was held responsible for not having prepared it correctly and could be punished by the authorities.

‘Mummy’ made from ground-up human corpses mummified in Ancient Egypt was added to many theriac recipes during the Middle Ages, as that too had come to be regarded as a universal panacea and the tombs of Middle East were ransacked by Syrian merchants to keep up with the demand. When these became scarce, merchants and apothecaries were forced to use modern cadavers. The herbalist, John Parkinson, (1567-1650) maintained that the best mummy was obtained from bodies embalmed in the Egyptian manner, but Oswald Croll (1580-1609) recommended making mummy from hanged felons, preferably of ruddy complexion and around 24 years old.

Egyptian Mummy - Louvre Museum

Photo: Dada

In London in July 1586, during the reign of Elizabeth I, the Master and Wardens of Grocers Hall discovered ‘Jeane Triacle’ (Genoa treacle) being sold, which they found to be

‘unwholesome, being compounded by certain rude and unskilful men.’

As a result, they petitioned that the recipe for theriac’s proper manufacture should be kept on record at Grocer’s Hall and preparation of this treacle in London was entrusted to only one of their members, William Besse, an apothecary. He had the monopoly for the whole of London and seven miles around. This attempt at regulation by the Grocer’s guild had the effect of stimulating a flourishing illicit trade in unlicensed mithridate and theriac, and a great many more ‘unwholesome’ treacles were sold behind the backs of authorities. Human nature never changes, nor does our ending search for the wonder drugs which will cure all.

'The Village Apothecary' (who keeps his face masked)

Artist: David Tenier the Younger (1610-1690)

Beaver Country - Michelle Lovric

In the late springtime of this year, nine poets went into a primaeval forest. Each one came out of that experience just a little different from the way they were before.

I was one of them.

I’m fortunate enough to be among the four women and five men who participate in the long-running poetry seminar led by Robert Vas Dias. Our time in the forest was part a retreat Robert had organised for us at Jaczno, an absurdly picturesque lodge perched over two lakes amid clusters of proper fairy-tale woods in the north east of Poland. The word ‘idyllic’ is too banal for the beauty of the place.

For the previous two years, I’d been working full-time on a hard-hitting non-fiction book, the partial object of which was to make sure that there was absolutely no poetry in the portrayal of a brutal crime. That would simply not have been appropriate.

So the week in Poland was a chance to retrieve anything writerly and poetic in me that had survived the project. Two years is a long time. I feared that I would be a disappointment to myself and the group.

But at Jaczno, it all came crowding back with a force that took me by surprise and wrapped me in happiness. To be in such a place, with such intelligent and creative companions, also had the effect of reminding me what my sense of humour is for.

All gateways were open, and beckoning. Everything was elevated. Some things were darker than the forest. Many things were just a little bit hilarious. Storks and mosquitoes became creatures of myth. Each of us produced a completely different response to a graveyard of seven faiths in Suwalki. To me, Rutka Tartak, a harmless little village, seemed the name of a Mata Hari with cheekbones like the steppes of Asia, tall red heels and a hungry womb, who smiled like lightning and fed like a shark. She became the protagonist of my first ever pantoum. And when I discovered that beavers are the totemic animals of the region, well, I just couldn’t help myself …

I have occasionally posted some of my poetry on this site, with the excuse that the poems in question had an historical bent. But I have never before posted a first draft written in a couple of hours.

However, that’s exactly what I am going to do now – just to show the effect of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, with all creaturely comforts provided too and a magical atmosphere of kindness.

When I next have some poet-time, this poem will be shortened and tightened so that it is less autobiographical and therefore easier on the reader – but it will never again be as good in the sense of pleasure it gave me as a writer to untether, be wild outdoors, and to play in the word Badlands without caution or constraint.

Beaver Country

A diligence of poets drove to Wigry
collecting hope-twigs in their notable books
for the typical infrastructures – thought-palaces moated
against doubt-wolves; dams to defend against block-bears.
Poets’ fingers grow continuously and
must be filed down by pressing on pens and keys
or they may become too long to be gloved.
Poets live up to ninety-five stanzas in the wild.
They generally have poor foresight, making up for it
with keen senses of tickling, trombone and liquorice.
Poets wear their hearts on their glands, recognise their kin
by literary secretions. They can smell blood.


Poets work late into the night, sometimes throwing up
an entire manuscript in the lifecycle of a single moon.
They have been hunted almost to extinction,
decried as an invasive species because of forests written off
to build their villanelles and canticles. For this reason
a poet has not been seen in London since May, 1812.


While more diligent poets forage in the forest,
she stays home nursing her delicacies.
But a disembeavered poem-shoot warm-noses
out of her wrist and begins to build a sonnet.
While she’s slapping that down, behind her back,
up lurches the scaffolding of a sestina,
stuttering on quaking-aspen and swan-bone
barely held together by Vaseline and irony.


Meanwhile, there’s a tapping at the back of her mind,
like the throb of a scaly tail slapping the hell
out of the serenity of a flowing transcript’s meniscus.
It’s reminding her she knows too much about poets.


In Venice, she taught Worshipful London Apothecaries
about castoreum, the yellow exudate of the poet’s heart-
shaped castor gland. Tinctured in alcohol, its perfume honks
a leather-bound must-note, which must be aged some years
for its harsh rawness to mellow. Only then is it
also good for hysteria, headache and that difficult second novel.


Dried poet testimonies were for centuries used to relieve pain.
Aesop himself footnoted that poets would chew off
their own testimonies to save themselves from hunters.
Because of the overlapping scales on their, pardon me, envois,
the Catholic Church defined poet-flesh as fish
so poetry may be consumed in godly fashion on Fridays.

Poet pelts have been bartered by publishers for centuries.
The European colonisation of Canada had at its secret heart
the quest for frontier poets, and especially their silky sub-texts,
the very best thing for making warm hats.


Enough! She takes a walk to get away from so much
involuntary beavering; promptly trips on a large white root.
Except it’s the thigh bone of Trogontherium, the giant
Eurasian beaver long since believed to be out of print.               



Michelle Lovric’s website.
Photos from the Jaczno lodge website; beaver/poet courtesy of Wellcome Images.

The Apothecary as melting pot - Michelle Lovric

Many modern chemist shops, as typified by Boots, are large, impersonal places.

They could not be more different from their antecedents in Venice.

The old Venetian chemist, known as the Apothecary or Speziale,  ran a highly personal business, often trading on the cult of his own personality and the special patent remedies he produced. His shop had its own logotype – often an animal, mythical eminence, religious figure or human virtue - which was reproduced on his handbills. More than that, each Apothecary shop, or Spezier, was a fertile ‘contact zone’ between classes, races, professions and the sexes.

Signor Speziale probably came from the citizen class, but he mixed with noblemen, merchants, scientists, doctors, priests, writers, performers, ambassadors and – spies.

His skills and cultural knowledge gave him respectability and social permeability – and so did his establishment, as seen in this painting by Pietro Longhi, 1752.

It shows an apothecary in his elegant shop, examining the throat of a young female singer, while an apprentice takes notes and other patients wait their turn. They include a friar and a nobleman.

For Signor Speziale’s premises were no mere dispensary. His shop was luxuriously appointed with carved wood panelling, furnished not just with the picturesque tools of his trade, including enormous mortars & pestles, duck-billed alembics, painted glass and majolica pots and talismanic objects, but also with exotic plants, perfumed oils, books, ledgers and religious paintings, because medicine was a holy art in Venice.

Like art, Venetian medicine underwent a distinct humanist Renaissance. So in Signor Speziale’s shop you would find the curious mixture of theatre and science, modernity and antiquity, that characterized Venetian medicine.

Our Signor Speziale might have the traditional crocodile hanging from his ceiling, a private collection of wonders from the natural world.

Above is the studio of a Neapolitan collector and apothecary, Ferrante Imperato, who imported some drugs from Venice. Imperato’s Venetian counterpart would have adopted some of this intellectually provoking interior design. The Golden Ostrich, for example, had a narvalus horn to entertain its visitors.

 Notice the chatterers, admirers and strollers here … Prices of medicines were fixed by the state, so Venetian apothecaries had to compete for attention and allure clients in other ways. So Signor Speziale’s shop was a place where men might drop in after work – or instead of work. It was clean and smelled delightful, unlike the streets of Venice. The goldsmith Alessandro Caravia observed in 1542 that only paradise could smell better than a Venetian pharmacy.
This pleasant place was therefore a site for socialising, gossip, political discussion and even gambling. People came to play chess, to network socially. There was a convivial atmosphere, as in a coffee shop. Apothecaries offered mail-drop services and could even print for clients.
Our Signor Speziale was often a bit of a newsmonger and a newshound. In 1755, Carlo Goldoni, Venice’s Shakespeare, produced a musical comedy called Lo Speziale, in which the apothecary Sempronio is obsessed with the news cycle. The ‘avvisi’ or news bulletins are delivered throughout the day to his premises. In this picture you see him avidly reading one.

At the times of the wars against the Ottoman Turks, people would gather at the great pharmacies to hear the latest. And as well as disseminating news of battles, pirates and politics, selling medicines, and having learned or philosophical discussions, Signor Speziale might well be working on a book of remedies of his own for publication, to solidify his immortality. Giorgio Melichio at Lo Struzzo was particularly prolific, as were his heirs in business Alberto Stecchini and Antonio de Sgobbis.

The humanism of the Renaissance also positively contaminated Signor Speziale’s profession. He would know Latin, and ancient Greek. Venice being the heartland of Italian printing, he would have read the works of Avicenna and Serapion, and particularly Galen and Hippocrates.

The apothecaries of Venice were obsessed with recovering the ancient herbal remedies of the past, particularly those of Dioscorides, promoted by the Venetian physician Pietro Matteoli as well as the materia medica of the chemistry kit of course. So a director of one of the great botanical gardens on the mainland might visit our Signor Speziale with samples of medicinal herbs. Apothecaries from other towns in Italy might also come calling, hoping to hear about Venetian novelties and marketing techniques.

Doctors and physicians would of course come to Signor Speziale both to dispense prescriptions and on the hunt for patients. Scipione Mercurio, planning to start a medical practice in Venice, was told by a local physician that he needed only two things to be a success in Venice:

1. to know how to get a woman pregnant and
2. to have a good relationship with the speziali
Doctors issued their prescriptions in person at Signor Speziale’s premises. The doctor might suggest a substitute ingredient if something was not in stock. Physicians often had favourite apothecary shops, but they were not allowed to have a financial interest in them. This did not stop Signor Speziale making handsome gifts – especially of expensive drugs – to the doctors who brought them work.
As well as from the medical professionals, Signor Speziale would receive visits from servants coming to get discreet feminine remedies for their noble mistresses, like Polvere di Hannover – a popular prophylactic against fainting. Or those mistresses might come themselves, sure of a pleasant, entertaining and even educational time.
And finally, given all this activity, Our Signor Speziale might be a conscious or an unwitting host to spies and informers from foreign states or cities, plus the spies and informers of the Inquisition and the Holy Office, watching the spies and the informers of foreign states.
Not surprisingly, some apothecaries were accused of heresy by the Holy Office – the Moor, the Angel and the Falcon were denounced in 1551, along with their apprentices. The Inquisitors (from 1539) kept an eye on the apothecaries because of the books they collected, which often associated healing with magic or ancient pagan wisdom.

 

Moreover, such dangerous ideas were freely discussed in the sociable environment of Signor Speziale’s shop. In 1611, Angelo Cerutti of the Sun at Arsenale was spied on by the Inquisition. He was arrested in 1612 and tortured probably by the strappado, a rope that tied his hands behind him and lifted him up until his arms broke. On the basis of his confession a Spanish conspiracy was uncovered. Cerruti was exiled.
In 1620 the Golden Lion at San Marco and the Castle in Castello were accused of hosting dissident religious discussions. In 1622 Bartolomeo di Marostica at the Charity was denounced for blasphemy. And later, after the Venetians’ revolution against the Austrians in 1848, a Venetian Speziale partisan was deported to Bohemia. His name was Bernardo Baldisseroto … and he was the father of Giovanni Baldisseroto the pharmacist of I do San Marchi, which can still be seen today as its interior has been rehomed at the Ca’ Rezzonico museum.

All in all, there was more than crushed millipedes fermenting in the ‘front room’ of our Signor Speziale’s shop.

 I never fail to think about that when I am waiting in a queue in Boots.

Michelle Lovric
An essay by Michelle Lovric is included in this new publication, Stories of Inspiration: Historical Fiction Edition, Volume 1: Historical Fiction Writers Trace Their Journeys from Starting Point to Finished Work, edited by Suzanne Fox.