Antidotary

A lerned man may hereby gathere that the doctore havyng an evil conscience […] poysoned hymself […] but, as it semeth by conjecture, receavyng suche chearefull message by poste from the commissyoners, wold have recovered hym selfe by medicyne, to late taken; for nuttes, rew, and fygges, ys a good antidotary preservative agaynst poysone, being taken in tyme.

It is a gross mistake to suppose that the apothecary’s shop contains a remedy for every disease, or that medical skill consists in prescribing an antidotary drug […]

In ancient times, in India, the kings used to decorate themselves with antidotary gems, as a safeguard against poisons. Even now the snake charmers apply a black stone on their bodies where they are wounded by the venomous reptile.

[…] he saith that some Jasper stones are found having in them the livelie image of a naturall man, with a sheeld at his necke and a speare in his hand, and under his feete a serpent: which stones so marked and signed, he preferreth before all the rest, bicause they are antidotaries or remedies notablie resisting poison.

In the Antidotaries of the Ancients, we find a great many Physical Compositions which seem to be wholly design’d for the Liver […]

1851, Review of Pharmacy of the Greeks and Romans by M. Cap, translated by W.H. Cobb, Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Volume 7, Number 5, May 1851, p. 377, Galen called all medicines administered internally, antidotes; thence, the word antidotary was for a long time employed synonymously with dispensary, or pharmacopœia.

1920, D’Arcy Power, “The Education of a Surgeon under Thomas Vicary,” lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 11 November, 1920, British Journal of Surgery, Volume 8, Number 31, pp. 256-257, Readiness of resource, mother-wit, and a fair average of manipulative skill were characteristics of the Tudor surgeon, and he trepanned the head, opened the chest, cut for stone, and amputated with remarkable success. He also had some knowledge of herbs and simples, and there had been handed down to him an antidotary or collection of prescriptions which had proved useful to his predecessors.

The practice of collecting recipes in antidotaries, probably composed in monasteries, goes back to the High Middle Ages.