Archeologists have found traces of cannabis fruits, seeds and fibers attached to pottery from 8000 BC in what is now Japan. While it’s not possible to say with any certainty what cannabis was used for, the presence of seeds plus fibers, with no smoking or ingestion evidence, points to a utilitarian plant: ropes, textiles, and probably a food source.
The earliest written documentation referring to the use of cannabis in medicine can be found in the Chinese Shen Nung Pen Ts’ao Ching. Dated to the first century AD it is however a collection of remedies which some circles like to consider dating back to 2700 BC, at the time of the mythical divinity Shen Nung. Although this date cannot be taken seriously other evidence points to these remedies (preparations for treating rheumatic pain, gout, malaria, and digestive issues) were likely used for at least several centuries before the manuscript was compiled.
The Hashish‐Eaters’ club was frequented by writers and poets as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and the painter Eugène Delacroix
The text further indicates the effects of ingesting too much cannabis, which causes to “see demons” and to “communicate with spirits,” but this is generally taken to describe the effects of consuming a toxic substance rather than a hallucinogenic property.
The earliest scientific evidence for the use of cannabis as a hallucinogenic dates to 500 BC at the Jirzankal Cemetery on the Pamir Plateau in western China. Analysis of burnt residues inside wooden braziers revealed high concentrations of cannabinol (CBN), THC’s residue after burning, but no residues from low-THC plants. This confirmed that only cannabis with high levels of THC was burned during funerary services.
The archeological record indicates that the strong analgesic properties of cannabis were first made use of by the Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo (110–207 AD), who performed surgery without causing pain in his patients by mixing cannabis resin with wine.
Swallowtail Garden Seeds PDM 1.0Along the shores of the Mediterranean, we know that the Egyptians made use of a plant they called šmšmt (shemshemet) medicinally from at least 1700 BC to wash inflamed eyes, to cool the uterus, to treat inflamed fingers and toenails, for ear pain and fever. It has to be noted that none of the Egyptian medical papyri mention inhalation or smoking, and none report of mental effects. The Egyptians used a well-documented list of psychoactive plants of which cannabis was not one of them.
The word šmšmt was first used to indicate fiber cordage and some have made the connection that this must refer to cannabis, but this is not widely accepted.
The most likely way cannabis arrived to Europe is through Scythians, a nomadic people who moved from Central Asia to modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia. The Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 BC) assisted to and wrote that the Scythians burned cannabis seeds in tents during funerary rituals, producing a vapor bath to which they reacted to with cries of delight. The account has been verified by independent archeological findings.
Even though cannabis was known in Greek and Roman times there is little evidence it was used for anything but its fibers (rope, sails, nets and textiles) at first. Records of medical use start appearing in the first century AD in Pliny’s Naturalis historia and culminate with the most famous Greek physician in the Roman world, Galen (129–201 AD), who lists many medical cannabis uses, but warns against its excessive consumption, which was popular at Roman banquets for its ability to induce relaxation, hilarity, and euphoria but with the side effect to induce thirst and sluggishness.
It is believed that cannabis arrived in the Arab world via merchants trading with India in the 9th century AD and simultaneously as a translation into Arabic of Greek and Roman authors like Dioscorides and Galen. The Arabs inherited the Greek and Roman medical tradition while the practice of extracting the high-THC resin from the cannabis flowers and rolling this into a paste only became practice by the 12th and 13th centuries.
Dominic Milton Trott CC BY 2.0Europeans during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance made use of cannabis differently than what was done in the Arab world. Europeans focused on the production of ropes, nets, sails and textiles, and on cannabis’ medical properties, but didn’t use it as an intoxicant. Many explanations have been put forward, but the single, most important was that European plants had low levels of THC, making intoxication extremely difficult if not impossible.
Medical cannabis’ modern history began in the 19th century when the scientific method was applied for the first time to the study of its properties. The first to do so was the Irish physician William Brooke O’Shaughnessy who worked and conducted the body of his experiments in India.
O’Shaughnessy had at his disposal libraries containing centuries of pharmacological records from Sanskrit, Persian, and Arab authors which he could systematically test for efficacy. He used some of his patients affected by rheumatisms, cholera or tetanus and even an infant suffering from convulsions as subjects, showing how cannabis could be effective in treating the symptoms or at least in providing the patient with a better quality of life where the treatment failed. His research and his writings have been key in promoting the use of cannabis in the Western world.
The French counterpart and contemporary to O’Shaughnessy was the psychiatrist Jacques‐Joseph Moreau who, like O’Shaughnessy, learned of cannabis during travel abroad (in his case to the Middle East). While his essays were fundamental in psychiatry for more than a century and he is considered the father modern psychopharmachology, it was his creation of the “Club des Hashischins” (The Hashish‐Eaters’ club) that was active among 1844 and 1849 at the Hotel de Lauzun, Paris, and was frequented, among the others, by writers and poets as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and the painter Eugène Delacroix, that made him a household name in France.
