seeking help to prosecute the war. But his allies, his own son, and his soldiers were all tired of him. In his despair he poisoned his wife and daughters, and then took poison himself. But according to the legend, propagated perhaps by some clever advertising quacks in Rome, he had so successfully immunised his body to the effects of all poisons that they would now take no effect. Consequently he had to call in the assistance of a Gallic soldier, who despatched his chief with a spear. The story of his defeat and death are historic; the poison story is legend which, however it was originated, was no doubt good value in the drug stores of Rome, where the confection of Mithridates was soon sold. As will be stated immediately there is abundant reason to believe that the alleged formula which Pompey was said to have discovered and to have had translated was devised at home.
In 1745 when a new London Pharmacopœia was nearly ready for issue, a scholarly exposure of the absurdity of the compound which still occupied space in that and in all other official formularies, along with its equally egregious companion, Theriaca, was published by Dr. William Heberden, a leading physician of the day, and though it was too late to cause the deletion of the formulas in the edition of 1746, that was the last time they appeared in the Pharmacopœia, though they had been given in all the issues of that work from 1618 onwards. No better completion of the history of this preparation can be given than that which Dr. Heberden wrote 165 years ago. The King of Pontus, he assumed, like many other ancient royalties, was pleased to affect special skill in the production of medicines, and it is not surprising that his courtiers should have flattered him on this accomplishment. Thus the opinion pre-
