Theriaca was the accepted designation, a title which has lasted throughout the subsequent centuries.
Dr. Heberden's criticism of the composition is as effective now as when he wrote, but it should be remembered that in his day there was a Theriacal party in medicine; to us the comments seem obvious. He points out that in the formula as it then appeared in the Pharmacopœia no regard was had to the known virtues of the simples, nor to the rules of artful composition. There was no foundation for the wonderful stories told concerning it, and the utmost that could then be said of it was that it was a diaphoretic, "which is commonly the virtue of a medicine which has none."
But even if undesigning chance did happen to hit upon a mixture which possessed such marvellous virtues, what foundation was there, he asked, for believing that any other fortuitous concourse of ingredients would be similarly successful? This preparation had scarcely continued the same for a hundred years at a time. According to Celsus, who first described it, it consisted of thirty-eight simples. Before the time of Nero five of these had been struck out and twenty new ones added. Andromachus omitted six and added twenty-eight; leaving seventy-five net. Aetius in the fifth century, and Myrepsus in the twelfth gave very different accounts of it, and since then the formulas had been constantly fluctuating. Some of the original ingredients were, Dr. Heberden said, utterly unknown in his time; others could only be guessed at. About a century previously a dispute about Balm of Gilead, which was one of the constituents, had been referred to the Pope, who, however, prudently declined to exercise his infallibility on this subject.
Authorities were not agreed whether it was better old
