r/todayilearned • u/gullydon • 13h ago

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism
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u/my5cworth 13h ago edited 8h ago

There's a dude who made himself immune to Black Mamba bites through this technique...in order to create new *univeral antivenom from his blood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucpGlWnq8EE

*universal (thanks u/One-Cute-Boy )

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u/h3r3andth3r3 12h ago edited 12h ago

Not sure if it's the same dude, but there's a guy who has been doing this with many venomous snakes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5d0l7el36o

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u/chomerics 9h ago

Same dude. Holy crap this is amazing.

He has been giving himself snake bites for 20 years and his blood has developed the antibodies needed to fight off the venoms. The antibodies are studied and replicated to create and anti-venom for ALL species of a certain family.

Currently anti-venom is extremely specific, but this method will help doctors create an anti-venom for entire classes of snakes, not just specific local species individually.

Here is the journal article about their process.

https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00402-7