against their drugs and poisons, as was the case with Mithridates, who, because of the precautionary drugs which he had before taken, could not find any poison that would kill him; and the King Nicomedes also used an antidote whenever he went to any place where he suspected poison; VI. 5.and this countercharm has been described by Mattioli in his notes upon Dioscorides.
And certainly it is necessary that they who compound the poisons should have drugs to protect themselves from them. Here I may recount what Nicolas Nicole says of a certain Duke who knew the use of a poison so subtle that, if it were thrown on burning coals, the smoke of it would kill all who were in the room except himself, who was protected by a certain antidote which he took beforehand. And we spoke in the last chapter of a man of Orgelet who carried two boxes, one filled with an ointment with which he spread the plague, the other of an antidote which he used every morning to safeguard himself against the malady: this story serves as a corroboration of my contention.
Nevertheless I hold that in most cases witches have no drug or herbs in their mouths, but that Satan alone causes the death or sickness in the secret manner which we have before described.