ANTIDOTES. Synon: _Alexipharmics._ _Alexiterials._ _Counter-poisons._ Medicines which are capable of preventing the ill effects of a poison; or, of counteracting its fatal virulence. There is perhaps no subject upon which the credulity of mankind has been so extravagantly exercised as on that of POISONS; nor is there, certainly, any class of remedies whose history has suffered so many vicissitudes from the caprice of hypothesis, as that of ANTIDOTES.[212] It is not my intention, on the present occasion,[213] to enumerate the many extraordinary virtues[214] which credulity has, at different times, assigned to such medicines; nor shall I consume the time of the reader by attempting to expose the absurdity of those fearful powers with which ignorance, terror, and imposture, have invested certain poisons,—a subtlety so extreme as to defeat the most skilful caution, and a virulence so manageable as to be capable of the most accurate graduation; so that while the former attribute was believed to ensure their deadly operation, although exerted through the most secret and least suspicious medium, as that of gloves,[215] tapers, or letters, the latter was said to enable the accomplished assassin to measure the allotted moments of his victim with the nicest precision, and to occasion his death at any period that might best answer the objects of the assassination.[216] The abandonment of such notions may be considered as one among the many advantages which have arisen to medicine, from the cultivation of physiology. Without farther introduction, I shall proceed to the main object of this work, and inquire how far a _chemical agent_ may be capable of neutralizing, or of decomposing, a poisonous substance in the human body; and endeavour to ascertain the degree of confidence to which it may in each particular case be entitled; equally important is it to learn, whether certain _vital_ agents may not be serviceable in cases of poisoning, either by promoting the elimination of the poison, or by producing a state of the system best calculated to resist its deleterious operation.