Alexipharmac Powder.
Take Goa-Stone, Contrayerva Stone, Gascoign Powder, Virginia Snake root, each 5 grains, make a Powder.
It's a Champion against malignant and pestilential Fevers, for it encourageth the Spirits, and drives out the Enemy by Sweat.
And here I would not have this most noble Antidote thought the worse of, because its jumbled up of such a vast number of Ingredients: For the virtue of an Alexipharmac, or Counter- Poison, doth not consist in this alone, that by reason of a certain occult Quality, it opposes Poison (as they phrase it) tota substantia; but especially, because it stirs up a fresh Ferment in the Body, by means of which, the sinking and almost dying Spirits being rous'd up again; and the Blood recovering its due mixture, and being brought off from Coagulation and Putrefaction: Nature makes a brisk Effort, and expels the deleterious Matter. Now to produce such a Fermentation, there are necessarily required Heterogeneous Particles, that cannot be intimately mix'd with, or subigated by the Blood: And the greater number of Ingredients there are, so much the greater likewise will be the Heterogeneity, and consequently the Fermentation. Thus we see, the great Alexipharmacks (such as Venice Treacle) are an huge hodg-podg of things wonderfully unlike each other, which because Experience hath establish'd for standing Medicines, some Body hath this Expression, That A Wise Man will make use of that which none but a Fool could have invented.
Thomas Fuller
Pharmacopeia Extemporanea 1710