Theriac and poisons (al-tiryaq wal-sumum)

Theriac (al-tiryaq) was a large compound drug used in ancient medicine against poisons and the bites of venomous creatures. It appears in the Canon in three places: Ibn Sina's remark that theriac has a second temperament arising from the blending of its simple drugs ⁵; the chapters on poisons in Book IV ¹; and the treatise on theriacs and the great electuaries in Book V ². This record describes what Ibn Sina wrote and what the hadith books report; it gives no treatment advice and no legal ruling. The legal side has its own record: Theriac.

Ibn Sina opens the sixth fann of Book IV with advice on guarding against drunk poisons: one who fears being given poison avoids foods of strong taste or smell, since these cover the taste of what is slipped in, and takes drugs that ward off the harm of poisons, such as mithridatum and Armenian bole ⁶. He then divides poisons into two kinds: those that act by a quality in them, such as the corrosive and putrefying, the burning and heating, the cooling and numbing, and the one that blocks the passages of breath; and those that act by their form and whole substance, such as bish (aconite) and tiger's gall, the worst of poisons. Some single out one organ, such as blister beetles for the bladder ⁷. He notes that one poison can kill a man and not a starling, and reports from Galen that an old woman took a little bish until her nature grew used to it, and from Rufus the story of a girl nourished on poison ⁷.

Ibn Sina says a poison is recognised by what it does in the body: heat, red eyes, distress and thirst point to a hot poison; drowsiness, numbness and cold to a narcotic; and failing strength, cold sweat and fainting to the kind that opposes man by its whole substance, the worst. Smells and the vomit may also be examined ⁸. His rule for one given poison is not to delay but to act before its power spreads in the body, with vomiting, many fluids and milk, and afterwards with warding drugs such as the sealed-earth theriac ⁹.

In Book V the treatise on theriacs and great electuaries opens with the Faruq theriac, which he calls the most majestic and best of compound drugs for its many benefits, especially against poisons from biting creatures such as snakes, scorpions and the rabid dog, and against deadly drunk poisons ². He says its original formula is that of Andromachus, that many physicians, Galen among them, tried to add and subtract in it out of a wish to be remembered, and that the sound course is not to touch what experience has shown to work ². He says theriac has an infancy, growth, youth, old age and death: it becomes a child after six months or a year, grows until it stands after ten years in hot lands and twenty in cold ones, and then declines until its theriac quality is stripped from it after thirty or sixty years ². In the treatise on the need for compounds he holds that viper flesh is a pillar of theriac, and that adding balādhur (marking nut) would spoil it ¹⁰.

Al-Bukhari reports from Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas: "Whoever has seven ajwa dates each morning, no poison or magic will harm him that day" ⁴; see Bukhari 5445. In another report in the same collection, whoever eats dates of ajwa each morning is not harmed that day by poison or magic until evening, and another transmitter says "seven dates" ¹¹. This record states no medical effect for them and only gives what is reported.

Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him) reports that when Khaybar was conquered a sheep containing poison was given as a gift to the Prophet ¹²; see Bukhari 4249 and Bukhari 3169. Anas reports that a Jewish woman brought the Prophet a poisoned sheep and he ate from it; people asked whether they should kill her and he said "No", and Anas says he kept seeing its trace in the palate of the Messenger of God ¹³; see Bukhari 2617. In Muslim's version she says "I wanted to kill you", and he replies that God would not give her power over that ¹⁴; see Muslim 5705. The museum sets out the reports and does not tie them to the physicians' statements; the placing under medicine is a historical grouping and not a ruling.

See also Simple and compound drugs and The Battle of Khaybar.