Theriac

[-JKP-]

Theriac was a medical compound thought to be a universal antidote or panacea, said to consist of 64 ingredients.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Clearly the production and use of this compound has a long history from Imperial Rome to Renaissance Venice and beyond. It would seem to be just the thing that those investigating Hellenistic influences or medieval pharmacognosy might have found to be interesting. But other than Diane's brief mentionings, the word has not been used - though there are a number of name variations like treacle.

Some of the 64 ingredients are included in the botanical identifications proposed by various VMs botanical researchers, but perhaps there are still a few ingredients that might help make a VMs identification. It just seems strange to me that the word is essentially unused, or else I'm not reading the right discussions.

There is a lone mineral-like object in the small-plants pages but as I've already mentioned on the blog, there's a distinct lack of non-plant medicinal ingredients in the VMS, ingredients that are found in many other herbals. We can't know what was on the missing pages, of course, but the sequence and format of the VMS plants seems to point in a different direction than traditional herbal compendiums.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the ingredients aren't consistent with Theriac recipes, since the manuscript is incomplete (and there were a variety of Theriac recipes), but there doesn't appear to be an obvious correspondence between the two.