Mithridaticon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An old medicinal paste made from many ingredients and taken as a general antidote against poisons and venoms
2. A compounded electuary once prescribed as a universal remedy to counteract poison and the bites of venomous creatures
3. A confection of numerous herbs and drugs formerly believed to protect the body from any kind of poisoning

Etymology: The most striking thing about this word is the man behind it. Mithridates VI was king of Pontus, a Hellenistic kingdom on the Black Sea, and he reigned in the first century BCE. According to the ancient writer Aulus Gellius and others, he was so afraid of being poisoned that he trained his body to resist toxins by taking small, gradually increasing doses of poison every day. Whether the story is literally true or a later embellishment, the reputation stuck, and his name became attached to remedies that were supposed to protect against poison. The word comes from Ancient Greek "Mithridatikón", meaning roughly "Mithridatic (thing)", formed from the king's name "Mithridátēs" with the adjectival suffix "-ikós". Its close relatives "mithridate" and "mithridatium" came into use as names for the same kind of compound, a mixture of many ingredients believed to counter venom. Those alternatives are doublets, forms derived from the same source that entered the language by different routes.

Synonyms: mithridate, antidote, electuary