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Panaceas, i. e. medicines that can cure many or almost all diseases, were used throughout the history from antiquity until modern times. The paper focuses on ideas developed to explain the admirable actions of these medicines. In antiquity such actions seem to be related to the large number of ingredients as well as to the presence of materials connected to potent poisons (e. g. viper flesh). Later, with the advent of alchemy, the alchemical preparation is regarded to produce medicines with such properties, the most pregnant example being lapis philosophorum. Such explanations are underpinned by the correspondences with higher astral influences as espoused by Paracelsus, as well as by van Helmont's idea that both disease and cure depend exclusively on the state of the 'spirit of life'. At the same time Galenic-like ideas survive, in the sense that panaceas are something like universal purifiers. Besides curing diseases panaceas were used to ensure long living, permanent health as well as for achieving rejuvenation. In this respect, they show an affinity to the so-called 'healing power of nature'.

The paper focuses on the modes of action, which medical authors ascribe to medicines, between antiquity and early modern times, mainly on those modes that are described in a sufficiently clear way and are, moreover, based on some fairly general principles. It is proposed that there are four main types of such modes of action: a) by neutralizing opposite qualities, b) by eliminating ("purging") excessive or abnormal humours (or materia peccans), c) by directly attacking the disease entity, d) by acting on (and "normalizing") the "vital principle". For each of these types, the principal characteristics as well as some major variations are presented, with reference to representative authors and texts. It is moreover attempted to determine the extent to which ideas about the specific action of medicines emerge within each of these types and to outline the particular variations these ideas acquire.