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• Theriac

  R. Sale > 11-08-2016, 10:53 PM

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

• RE: Theriac

  Koen G > 12-08-2016, 04:27 AM

  JKP also wrote about it. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
  I think his conclusion is correct that there are no clear non-plant ingredients, which we would expect if there was a direct connection to theriac.
  
  Furthermore I strongly agree with Diane that there is no specific focus on medicine in the MS: the products referred to are valuable for a wide array of reasons, either because they are commercially valuable or because they were immediately useful to the trader's crew and the ship (supplies, repair...).
  
  Now of course the ingredients for theriac might give us an idea of what was known and available through trade, and perhaps supplement a list of possible plants.

• RE: Theriac

  ReneZ > 12-08-2016, 05:37 AM

  Hmmm, I can't help but observe that, by exactly the same reasoning, there is no specific focus on trade in the Voynich MS.

• RE: Theriac

  -JKP- > 12-08-2016, 07:21 AM

  (11-08-2016, 10:53 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.

• RE: Theriac

  R. Sale > 12-08-2016, 11:17 PM

  I agree with the general assessment and to quote from JKP: "there doesn't appear to be an obvious correspondence between the two." However from some perspectives, it seems strange that a medical formulation of such significance and with such strong historical connections should be found to be altogether absent from the VMs. Especially if it is suggested that the VMs makes much use of other ties to classical history. Or if the VMs is proposed to be a record of pharmaceutical formulations, why would this most valuable, universal antidote not be included?
  
  I've done virtually nothing with the VMs plants and will accept any corrections. However I recall that it has been suggested that opium, pepper and perhaps a few other spices  identified in the VMs illustrations are also found in the list of theriac ingredients. Clearly opium, in sufficient dosage, is going to have an observable effect. And whatever else is in the theriac formulation and what it does remains to be seen.
  
  It was certainly bad news for the vipers. Is there a viper in the VMS? Or perhaps there were no vipers to be found.

• RE: Theriac

  -JKP- > 13-08-2016, 06:07 AM

  (12-08-2016, 11:17 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I agree with the general assessment and to quote from JKP: "there doesn't appear to be an obvious correspondence between the two." However from some perspectives, it seems strange that a medical formulation of such significance and with such strong historical connections should be found to be altogether absent from the VMs. Especially if it is suggested that the VMs makes much use of other ties to classical history. Or if the VMs is proposed to be a record of pharmaceutical formulations, why would this most valuable, universal antidote not be included?
  
  I've done virtually nothing with the VMs plants and will accept any corrections. However I recall that it has been suggested that opium, pepper and perhaps a few other spices  identified in the VMs illustrations are also found in the list of theriac ingredients. Clearly opium, in sufficient dosage, is going to have an observable effect. And whatever else is in the theriac formulation and what it does remains to be seen.
  
  It was certainly bad news for the vipers. Is there a viper in the VMS? Or perhaps there were no vipers to be found.

  
  There is a seedhead that resembles the poppy seed capsule and there aren't many seed capsules in the plant world that resemble poppy which are also large like poppy capsules. Anemones have a similar seed capsule, but it's rarely as large. The opium poppy is a common wildflower  and is included in many herbal manuscripts, so it would not be a surprise to find it in the VMS. What's puzzling about the VMS "poppy" is that the leaves don't look like poppy leaves even though a fair amount of attention has been given to leaves in the VMS in general.
  
  There are some snaky creatures in the VMS, but not one that seems to explicitly be a viper. The snakes that do appear give the feeling they are more mneumonic than stand-alone but... it's hard to be certain.

• RE: Theriac

  Helmut Winkler > 13-08-2016, 08:43 AM

  The distinction in medieval pharmacology and medicine is between simplicia and composita. Theriac is one (of many) composita.
  
  I would say that (most of) the plants are simplicia in a medieval medical sense.
  
  The jars in the pharmacological section look very much like the jars used for keeping composita, including the labels these jars had announcing the name (mithridaticum, theriac and so on) of the compositum kept in it

• RE: Theriac

  Diane > 13-08-2016, 04:34 PM

  I also wrote about theriac (Feb.2015), and still think that the limited number of ingredients even in the various recipes, together with the wide comparative set of languages in which those recipes are written, together with an illustrated theriac manual to check against the Voynich botanical folios might altogether be of some help to those working on the script and written part of the text.
  
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  At the time, I did ask if anyone might like to help me, too, by translating the Arabic labels shown in my example.  One kind expert agreed to do so and began it, but as he lives in an area where contact with foreigners is not encouraged, he found himself unable to do more.
  
  It would still be appreciated if anyone with Arabic would be willing to do that.
  ---------
  As to the manuscript's alluding to trade, the list of posts I've written explaining, illustrating, and demonstrating that point would fill more lines than I have time to add.
  
  In any case, one can only present the evidence, the references, the primary source itself and the resulting argument.
  
  To paraphrase a famous philosopher, "You cannot reason anyone out of a position to which they did not come, in the first place, by relying on reason."

• RE: Theriac

  R. Sale > 13-08-2016, 11:18 PM

  Leonardo Fioravanti (doctor) was an Italian practitioner of the medical arts from the mid through the late 1500s.
  
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  I happened to find William Eamon's book, the one listed third in Further reading. While the timing might be a bit late for VMs parchment purists, and the subject himself was a strong and early opponent of Galenic tradition, there is still an overall presence of the established medical tradition he found himself up against. And in the situation of simples versus the complex compounds like theriac, Fioravanti favored the simples, in conflict with the societies of traditional physicians.
  
  One thing Professor Eamon said about the physicians of the Humanist period was that they were focused more directly on Galen and were attempting to remove Arabic influences. Yet, as Diane's work shows, there were also Arabic formulas for theriac as well, potentially coming from or influenced by Galen also. But in the VMs, strangely, there's no theriac or so it seems.

• RE: Theriac

  ReneZ > 14-08-2016, 07:04 AM

  Indeed, the medieval illustrated herbals generally speaking dealt with simples, i.e. medicine based on one ingredient only. Not all of them were strictly dealing with medicine, because a few of them have no descriptions or recipes, and several were only meant as 'objects of artistic value', dedicated to highly placed individuals and intended to be included in princely libraries. They were never intended to be consulted by physicians or pharmacists.
  
  It is certainly correct that the herbs shown in the Voynich MS do not (clearly) match any sequence known from other herbal MSs, but the herbal or botanical part of it (one can name it what one wants) is clearly modelled after medieval herbal MSs. Both Toresella and Touwaide, though they have quite a different opinion about the MS, clearly confirm this.
  Touwaide also stated (in private communication) that, while the herbs / plants shown are not clearly according to any herbal tradition, the few that are recognisable do fit in the mediterranean world.
  
  The exact purpose of the Voynich MS has to remain a guess as long as we can't read the text.
  The option that it is just meant to 'look like' a book of science, even when clearly made in the 15th C, should not be discarded.
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