Andromachus

, a native of the island of Crete, and physician to the emperor Nero, A. D. 65, has been handed down to posterity, as the inventor of a medicine named theriaca, which is now deemed of little use. It however set aside the mithridate, which till then had been held in great esteem. Andromachus wrote the description of his antidote in elegiac verse, which he dedicated to Nero. His son, of the same name, wrote this description in prose. Damocrates turned it into Iambic verse in a poem, which he wrote upon Antidotes. Galen informs us that | Andromachus the father wrote a treatise “De Medicamentis compositis ad affectus externos,” and that he was a man of great learning and eloquence. Erotion dedicated his Lexicon to him, and some writers say he was a good astrologer. He was the first who bore the tide of archiater. ¹