cheaply and easily produce
antibiotics,” Appendino concluded.
potent
The Hidden History Of A Miracle Plant
But introducing cannabis into the formal
healthcare system is nothing new; the plant
has been used as medicine by different
cultures for millennia.
A 1960 paper by Professors Dr. J. Kabelik
and Dr. F. Santavy of Palacky University in
the Czech Republic entitled Marijuana as a
Medicament
is perhaps the most
comprehensive look at marijuana’s
traditional use around the globe ever written.
Surprisingly, the authors claim that for most
cultures and for most time periods, cannabis
was used as an antibiotic and treatment for
chronic illnesses first and foremost, while its
narcotic use is limited to certain areas and
historical periods. “All the information
obtained from European folk medicine with
regard to treatment with cannabis shows
clearly that there do not appear to be any
narcotic substances in it, or if there are then
only in a negligible amount,” the authors
claim. “Instead of that, emphasis has been
laid on the antiseptic effect, hence on the
antibiotic and to a small extent even on the
analgetic (analgesic) effect.
”The same pattern was found in ancient
Egypt,
where
“papyruses
point
fundamentally to antiseptic use” and in
modern African tribes, where the “analgetic,
sedative and antibiotic properties of
cannabis in internal and external application
are well known.”
In South American folk medicine, cannabis
was used for everything from gonorrhea to
tuberculosis, according to the paper, and in
Southern Rhodesia “it is a remedy for
anthrax, sepsis, dysentery, malaria and for
tropical quinine-malarial haemoglobinuria.
”Even as late as the 19th century, cannabis
was used by Western doctors to combat
serious illnesses at home and abroad.
An 1843 article in London’s Provincial
Medical Journal, for example, chronicles an
Irish doctor’s success in treating both
tetanus and cholera in India by using
cannabis in the form of crude hemp resin.
Both these diseases are caused by bacteria
and were major killers at the time.
A potent and commonly used medicine,
cannabis was added to the official U.S.
Pharmacopoeia in 1851, where it remained
until it was removed in 1942.
Coincidentally, the widespread manufacture
and use of early commercial antibiotics —
like penicillin, which was first isolated in
1929 but not mass produced until 1945 —
happened at the same time as cannabis was
taken out of medicinal use.
The next half a century saw the touting of
antibiotics as miracle drugs while cannabis
came to be almost completely associated
with getting “high” —
Its potent medicinal properties obscured
behind a cloud of fear and propaganda.
It is only in the last couple of decades that
the failure of antibiotics and clinical
medicine to address a fast growing number
of serious illnesses has driven peopl