It was probably at this point that Mithridates, aware of his numerous and powerful enemies, earned his nomination as the world’s first experimental toxicologist. He started taking small doses of poison on a regular basis; both to accustom himself to the taste, and his system to the effects. After a while he had put together a small pharmacopoeia of poisons and antidotes that were known for generations afterwards as ‘Mithridatic potions’.
