Toxic remedies: Poisons and medicine in Eurasian history

Abstract

Histories of medicine are conventionally confined to one geographical region and assume a sharp distinction between medicines and poisons. Recent scholarship, however, has created very different perspectives. Medico-toxic substances were highly mobile commodities that often breached any clear distinction between what kills and what heals. The investigation of poisons could be innovative and integral to the ways in which medicines were conceived and deployed. The search for ‘potent’ remedies, but also for poison antidotes and elixirs, fostered a transregional quest for new ‘wonder drugs’ and the means of ‘taming’ or mastering their toxicity. Further, there is much to be gained by looking at developments from a trans-Eurasian perspective and, rather than imagining discrete ‘systems’ of medicine, exploring patterns of commonality and exchange, as well as divergence, between constituent regions and over an extended period of time.