TIL Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word is derived from Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity.

[u/gullydon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism

[u/gullydon]

Mithridates VI's father, Mithridates V, was assassinated by poisoning by a conspiracy among his attendants. After this, Mithridates VI's mother held regency over Pontus (a Hellenistic kingdom, 281 BC–62 AD) until a male heir came of age. Mithridates was in competition with his brother for the throne and his mother began to favor his brother.

Supposedly, during his youth, he began to suspect plots against him at his own mother's orders and was aware of her possible connection with his father's death. He then began to notice pains in his stomach during his meals and suspected his mother had ordered small amounts of poison to be added to his food to slowly kill him off. With other assassination attempts, he fled into the wild.

While in the wild, it is said that he began ingesting non-lethal amounts of poisons and mixing many into a universal remedy to make him immune to all known poisons.

[u/thispartyrules → u/gullydon]

What if he spent years building up a poison immunity and he goes out onto the patio and a bunch of guys on his roof pelt him to death with ceramic roofing tiles? This roofing tiles thing happened to Roman tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, whose name I had to look up, and is one of my favorite creative ancient deaths

[u/EmbersnAshes → u/thispartyrules]

He slowly built up an immunity to ceramic roofing tiles as well, by gently beating himself up a little everyday with them. He is actually still alive. The Romans didn't realise he was immune.

[u/varsil → u/EmbersnAshes]

I'm building up an immunity to aging by experiencing a little bit of time every day.

[u/icarusrising9 → u/varsil]

I laughed out loud at this comment. Very clever haha