[9] Introduction from "Marijuana: Medical Papers," Tod H. Mikuriya, M.D.,
Medi-Comp Press, 1973, pp. xiii-xxvii, describing some of the recent
history of western medical explorations into the salutory medicinal
benefits of hemp drugs--a history that is almost completely unknown to
people at the end of the 20th century, but, throughout the majority of
the 19th century, was commonly known and experienced by much of the
population:
Introduction
Medicine in the Western World has forgotten almost all it once knew
about therapeutic properties of marijuana, or cannabis.
Analgesia, anticonvulsant action, appetite stimulation, ataraxia,
antibiotic properties and low toxicity were described throughout
medical literature, beginning in 1839, when O'Shaughnessy introduced
cannabis into the Western pharmacopoeia.
As these findings were reported throughout Western medicine, cannabis
attained wide use. Cannabis therapy was described in most
pharmacopoeial texts as a treatment for a variety of disease
conditions.
During the second half of the 1800s and in the present century,
medical researchers in some measure corroborated the early reports of
the therapeutic potential of cannabis. In addition, much laboratory
research has been concerned with bioassay, determination of the mode of
action, and attempts to solve the problems of insolubility in water and
variability of strength among different cannabis specimens.
"Recreational" smoking of cannabis in the twentieth century and the
resultant restrictive federal legislation have functionally ended all
medical uses of marijuana.
In light of such assets as minimal toxicity, no buildup of tolerance,
no physical dependence, and minimal autonomic disturbance, immediate
major clinical reinvestigation of cannabis preparations is indicated in
the management of pain, chronic neurologic diseases, convulsive
disorders, migraine headache, anorexia, mental illness, and bacterial
infections.
Recently declassified secret U.S. Defense Department studies
reconfirm marijuana's congeners to have therapeutic utility.
Cannabis indica, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis americana, Indian hemp and
marijuana (or marihuana) all refer to the same plant. Cannabis is used
throughout the world for diverse purposes and has a long history
characterized by usefulness, euphoria or evil--depending on one's point
of view. To the agriculturist cannabis is a fiber crop; to the
physician of a century ago it was a valuable medicine; to the
physician of today it is an enigma; to the user, a euphoriant; to the
police, a menace; to the traffickers, a source of profitable danger;
to the convict or parolee and his family, a source of sorrow.
This book is concerned primarily with the medicinal aspects of
cannabis.
The Chinese emperor Shen-nung is reported to have taught his people
to grow hemp for fiber in the twenty-eighth century B.C. A text from
the period 1500-1200 B.C. documents a knowledge of the plant in China-
-but not for use as fiber. In 200 A.D., the use of cannabis as an
analgesic was described by the physician Hoa-tho.[44]
In India the use of hemp preparations as a remedy was described
before 1000 B.C. In Persia, cannabis was known several centuries
before Christ. In Assyria, about 650 B.C., its intoxicating properties
were noted.[44]
Except for Herodotus' report that the Scythians used the smoke from
burning hemp seeds for intoxication, the ancient Greeks seemed to be
unaware of the psychoactive properties of cannabis. Dioscorides in the
first century A.D. rendered an accurate morphologic description of the
plant, but made no note of intoxicating properties.[10]
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Arabic writers described
the social use of cannabis and resultant cruel but unsuccessful
attempts to suppress its non-medical use.[44]
Although Galen described the use of the seeds for creating warmth, he
did not describe the intoxicating qualities of hemp. Of interest is
the paucity of references to hemp's intoxicating properties in the lay
and medical literature of Europe before the 1800s.[44]
The therapeutic use of cannabis was introduced into Western medicine
in 1839, in a forty-page article by W. B. O'Shaughnessy, a thirty-
year-old physician serving with the British in India.[27] His
discussion of the history of the use of cannabis products in the East
reveals an awareness that these drugs had not only been used in
medicine for therapeutic purposes, but had also been used for
recreational and religious purposes.
O'Shaughnessy is not primarily known for his discovery of hemp drugs,
but rather for his basic studies on intravenous electrolyte therapy in
1831, and his introduction of the telegraph into India in the
1850s.[26]
After studying the literature on cannabis and conferring with
contemporary Hindu and Mohammedan scholars O'Shaughnessy tested the
effects of various hemp preparations on animals, before attempting to
use them to treat humans. Satisfied that the drug was reasonably safe,
he administered preparations of cannabis extract to patients, and
discovered that it had analgesic and sedative properties.
O'Shaughnessy successfully relieved the pain of rheumatism and stilled
the convulsions of an infant with this strange new drug. His most
spectacular success came, however, when he quelled the wrenching muscle
spasms of tetanus and rabies with the fragrant resin. Psychic effects
resembling a curious delirium, when an overdose was given, were treated
with strong purgatives, emetics with a blister to the nape of the neck,
and leeches on the temples.[27]
The use of cannabis derivatives for medicinal purposes spread rapidly
throughout Western medicine, as is evidenced in the report of the
Committee on Cannabis Indica of the Ohio State Medical Society,
published in 1860. In that report physicians told of success in
treating stomach pain, childbirth psychosis, chronic cough, and
gonorrhea with hemp products.[25] A Dr. Fronmueller, of Fuerth, Ohio,
summarized his experiences with the drug as follows:
I have used hemp many hundred times to relieve local pains of an
inflammatory as well as neuralgic nature, and judging from these
experiments, I have to assign to the Indian hemp a place among
the so-called hypnotic medicines next to opium; its effects are
less intense, and the secretions are not so much suppressed by
it. Digestion is not disturbed; the appetite rather increased;
sickness of the stomach seldom induced; congestion never. Hemp
may consequently be employed in inflammatory conditions. It
disturbs the expectoration far less than opium; the nervous
system is also not so much affected. The whole effect of hemp
being less violent, and producing a more natural sleep, without
interfering with the actions of the internal organs, it is
certainly often preferable to opium, although it is not equal to
that drug in strength and reliability. An alternating course of
opium and Indian hemp seems particularly adapted to those cases
where opium alone fails in producing the desired effect.[25]
Because cannabis did not lead to physical dependence, it was found to
be superior to the opiates for a number of therapeutic purposes.
Birch, in 1889, reported success in treating opiate and chloral
addiction with cannabis,[5] and Mattison in 1891 recommended its use to
the young physician, comparing it favorably with the opiates. He
quoted his colleague Suckling:
With a wish for speedy effect, it is so easy to use that
modern mischief-maker, hypodermic morphia, that they [young
physicians] are prone to forget remote results of incautious
opiate giving.
Would that the wisdom which has come to their professional
fathers through, it may be, a hapless experience, might serve
them to steer clear of narcotic shoals on which many a patient
has gone awreck.
Indian hemp is not here lauded as a specific. It will, at
times, fail. So do other drugs. But the many cases in which it
acts well, entitle it to a large and lasting confidence.
My experience warrants this statement: cannabis indica is,
often, a safe and successful anodyne and hypnotic.[23]
In their study of the medical applications of cannabis, physicians of
the nineteenth century repeatedly encountered a number of difficulties.
Recognizing the therapeutic potential of the drug, many experimenters
sought ways of overcoming these drawbacks to its use in medicine, in
particular the following:
Cannabis products are insoluble in water.
The onset of the effects of medicinal preparations of cannabis takes
an hour or so; its action is therefore slower than that of many other
drugs.
Different batches of cannabis derivatives vary greatly in strength;
moreover, the common procedure for standardization of cannabis samples,
by administration to test animals, is subject to error owing to
variability of reactions among the animals.
There is wide variation among humans in their individual responses to
cannabis.
Despite these problems regarding the uncertainty of potency and
dosage and the difficulties in mode of administration, cannabis has
several important advantages over other substances used as analgesics,
sedatives, and hypnotics:
The prolonged use of cannabis does not lead to the development of
physical dependence. [11, 13, 14, 24, 39, 44]
There is minimal development of tolerance to cannabis products.
(Loewe notes a slight "beginner's habituation" in dogs, during the
first few trials with the drug, as the only noticeable tolerance
effect.[20]) [11, 13, 14, 24, 44]
Cannabis products have exceedingly low toxicity.[9, 21, 22, 24] (The
oral dose required to kill a mouse has been found to be about 40,000
times the dose required to produce typical symptoms of intoxication in
man.)[21]
Cannabis produces no disturbance of vegetative functioning, whereas
the opiates inhibit the gastrointestinal tract, the flow of bile and
the cough reflex.[1, 2, 24, 44, 46]
Besides investigating the physical effects of medicinal preparations
of cannabis, nineteenth-century physicians observed the psychic effects
of the drug in its therapeutic applications.[4, 27, 33] They found
that cannabis first mildly stimulates, and then sedates the higher
centers of the brain. Hare suggested in 1887 a possible mechanism of
cannabis' analgesic properties:
During the time that this remarkable drug is relieving pain a
very curious psychical condition manifests itself; namely, that
the diminution of the pain seems to be due to its fading away in
the distance, so that the pain becomes less and less, just as the
pain in a delicate ear would grow less and less as a beaten drum
was carried farther and farther out of the range of hearing.
This condition is probably associated with the other well-
known symptom produced by the drug; namely, the prolongation of
time.[16]
Reynolds, in 1890,[33] summed up thirty years of his clinical
experience using cannabis, finding it useful as a nocturnal sedative in
senile insomnia, and valuable in treating dysmenorrhea, neuralgias
including tic douloureux and tabetic symptoms, migraine headache and
certain epileptoid or choreoid muscle spasms. He felt it to be of
uncertain benefit in asthma, alcoholic delirium and depressions.
Reynolds thought cannabis to be of no value in joint pains that were
aggravated by motion and in cases of true chronic epilepsy.
Reynolds stressed the necessity of titrating the dose of each
patient, increasing gradually every third or fourth day, to avoid
"toxic" effects:
The dose should be given in minimum quantity, repeated in not
less than four or six hours, and gradually increased by one drop
every third or fourth day, until either relief is obtained, or
the drug is proved, in such case, to be useless. With these
precautions I have never met with any toxic effects, and have
rarely failed to find, after a comparatively short time, either
the value or the uselessness of the drug.[33]
Concerning migraine headache, Osler stated in his text: Cannabis
indica is probably the most satisfactory remedy.[11, 28]
In his definitive survey of the literature and report of his own
studies, deceptively titled "Marihuana, America's New Drug Problem,"
Walton notes that cannabis was widely used during the latter half of
the nineteenth century, and particularly before new drugs were
developed:
This popularity of the hemp drugs can be attributed partly to
the fact that they were introduced before the synthetic hypnotics
and analgesics. Chloral hydrate was not introduced until 1869
and was followed in the next thirty years by paraldehyde,
sulfonal and the barbitals. Antipyrine and acetanilide, the
first of their particular group of analgesics, were introduced
about 1884. For general sedative and analgesic purposes, the
only drugs commonly used at this time were the morphine
derivatives and their disadvantages were very well known. In
fact, the most attractive feature of the hemp narcotics was
probably the fact that they did not exhibit certain of the
notorious disadvantages of the opiates. The hemp narcotics do
not constipate at all, they more often increase than decrease
appetite, they do not particularly depress the respiratory center
even in large doses, they rarely or never cause pruritis or
cutaneous eruptions and, most important, the liability of
developing addiction is very much less than with opiates.[44]
The use of cannabis in American medicine was seriously affected by
the increased use of opiates in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. With the introduction of the hypodermic syringe into American
medicine from England in 1856 by Barker and Ruppaner, the use of the
faster acting, water-soluble opiate drugs rapidly increased. The Civil
War helped to spread the use of opiates in this country; the injected
drugs were administered widely--and often indiscriminately--to relieve
the pain of maimed soldiers returning from combat. (Opiate addiction
was once called the "army disease."[41]) As the use of injected
opiates increased, cannabis declined in popularity.
Cannabis preparations were still widely available in legend and
over-the-counter forms in the 1930s. Crump (Chairman, Investigating
Committee, American Medical Association) in 1931 mentioned the
proprietaries "Piso's Cure," "One Day Cough Cure" and "Neurosine" as
containing cannabis.[44] In 1937 Sasman listed twenty-eight
pharmaceuticals containing cannabis.[36] Cannabis was still recognized
as a medicinal agent in that year, when the committee on legislative
activities of the American Medical Association concluded as follows:
. . . there is positively no evidence to indicate the abuse of
cannabis as a medicinal agent or to show that its medicinal use
is leading to the development of cannabis addiction. Cannabis at
the present time is slightly used for medicinal purposes, but it
would seem worthwhile to maintain its status as a medicinal agent
for such purposes as it now has. There is a possibility that a
re-study of the drug by modern means may show other advantages to
be derived from its medicinal use.[32]
Meanwhile, in Mexico, the poor were smoking marijuana to relax and to
endure heat and fatigue. (Originally marijuana was the Mexican slang
word for the smoking preparation of dried leaves and flowering tops of
the Cannabis sativa plant--the indigenous variety of the hemp plant.)
The recreational smoking of marijuana may have started in this
country in New Orleans in about 1910, and continued on a small scale
there until 1926, when a newspaper ran a six-part series on the use of
the drug.[44] The fad subsequently spread up the Mississippi and
throughout the United States, faster than local and state laws could be
passed to discourage it. The use of "tea" or "muggles" blossomed into
a minor "psychedelic revolution" of the 1920s. Narcotics officers
encouraged the enactment of local prohibitory laws and eventually
succeeded in bringing about restrictive Federal legislation. In 1937
Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act, the finale to a series of
prohibitory acts in the individual states. Under the new laws, the
already dwindling use of cannabis as a therapeutic substance in
medicine was brought to a virtual halt. In 1941, cannabis was dropped
from the "National Formulary and Pharmacopoeia."
Around the time of the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, Walton
postulated sites of action for cannabis drugs. Cortical areas, he
found, are affected at low dosage, while at high dosage there seems to
be a depressant effect on the thalamo-cortical pathways. Hyperemia of
the brain appears to be a local phenomenon, unless centers controlling
vasodilation might be located in the thalamo-cortical region. Similar
possible mechanisms are suggested for the phenomenon of mild
hypoglycemia, usual hunger and thirst and occasional lacrimation and
nausea.[44]
Despite restrictive legislation, a few medical researchers have had
the opportunity to continue the investigation of the therapeutic
applications of cannabis in recent years. In his study of the medical
applications of cannabis for Mayor La Guardia's committee, Dr. Samuel
Allentuck reported, among other findings, favorable results in treating
withdrawal of opiate addicts with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a
powerful purified product of the hemp plant.[1, 24]
An article in 1949, buried in a journal of chemical abstracts,
reported that a substance related to THC controlled epileptic seizures
in a group of children more effectively than diphenylhydantoin
(Dilantin(R)), a most commonly prescribed anticonvulsant.[9]
A number of experimenters, believing that cannabis products might be
of value in psychiatry, have investigated the applications of various
forms of them in the treatment of mental disorders. Cannabis had been
used in the nineteenth century to treat mental illness.[19, 25, 45, 46]
However, aside from some rather equivocal clinical studies, primarily
in the treatment of depression,[29, 30, 35, 39] and another report of
success in treating withdrawal from alcohol and opiate addiction,[42]
no significant contemporary psychiatric studies involving cannabis
therapy have been reported to date.
Many current "authoritative" publications unequivocally state that
there is no legitimate medical use for marijuana. As compared with the
1800s, this century has seen very little medical research on the array
of some twenty chemicals that are found in the hemp plant.[37]
Today's readers may tend to be skeptical about a report of a cure for
gonorrhea published over a century ago.[19, 25] Such findings may bear
reinvestigation, however, in the light of a report from Czechoslovakia
in 1960 that cannabidiolic acid, a product of the unripe hemp plant,
has bacteriocidal properties.[7] Some of the therapeutic applications
reported in the early medical papers have been corroborated by later
investigators, but for the most part the therapeutic aspects of
cannabis remain to be re-explored under modern clinical conditions.
In the past twenty years, clinical and basic research on cannabis
have dwindled to practically nothing. The record of tax stamps issued
by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics for cannabis research, as compared
with those for research on narcotic drugs, tells the story of the
twenty-year "drought" in the investigation of cannabis products:[43]
Users for Purposes of Research,
Instruction, or Analysis
Year Narcotic Drugs Marijuana
1938 . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 5
1941 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 ..
1943 . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 43
1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 ..
1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 87
1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1078 ..
1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 18
1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 ..
1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 6
1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 ..
1965 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 16
The rising non-medical use of marijuana both floated and was buoyed
by the "psychedelic revolution" of the mid 1960s. The panicked
reaction included a renewed scientific interest in the drug.
Eleven studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health
1967 concerning cannabis were either specialized animal experiments,
part of an observational sociologic study of a number of drugs, or
explorations of chemical detection methods. No human studies were
included.
Of the fifty-six projects funded during the next fiscal years 1968-69
only two used humans.[52] The next year was somewhat less cautious
with eight out of thirty-five projects devoted to clinical studies.[53]
Some of the preliminary results are in from these studies. Much is
still unpublished.
According to Harris, the toxicity factor of marijuana derivatives is
over two hundred and that chronic smoking of marijuana is less harmful
to the lungs than tobacco cigarettes.[49]
Domino described the cross tolerance of THC and alcohol in
pigeons[47] corroborating Jones' clinical observations.[50, 51] These
rediscoveries demand therapeutic trial.
In August 1971 certain secret Defense Department documents were
declassified. While at NIMH as a consulting research psychiatrist in
1967 I had become aware of the existence of clandestine research at
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
From 1954-59 Dr. Van M. Sim was in charge of the project. He
reported to "Medical World News:" "Marijuana . . . is probably the
most potent anti-epileptic known to medicine today."[49]
Dr. Harold F. Hardman, then with the Defense contracting group at the
University of Michigan's Department of Pharmacology reported effects of
profound hypothermia and felt marijuana derivatives to be potentially
quite useful in brain and traumatic surgery.[48]
The principal focus was, however, on the possible use of THC homologs
as incapacitating agents. Besides the aforementioned government agency
and university, the private sector was represented by the Arthur D.
Little Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts.[55]
Recently in the course of a study of effects on driving, it was
incidentally discovered that cannabis lowers intraocular pressure, thus
being possibly useful in the treatment of glaucoma.[56]
Thus, a helix is made. Modern technologic methods confirm
O'Shaughnessy's observations 130 years ago. After swinging away from
the knowledge of marijuana's properties through the worship of new
synthetics, an unrelated rise of marijuana use socially, illegalization
and removal from availability for clinical use, medicine rediscovers
marijuana.
The flame of knowledge is at a low ebb, kept alive by isolated
scientists and clinicians; it is now being rekindled by these recent
circumscribed revelations.
Unless existing restrictive state and federal laws governing
marijuana are changed, there will be no future for either modern
scientific investigation or controlled clinical trial by present-day
methods.
The tide is turning. The Federal Bureau of Narcotic and Dangerous
Drugs, National Institute of Mental Health and The Food and Drug
Administration Joint Committee recently authorized human therapeutic
trial of cannabis products. We may now look forward to reinvestigation
of the numerous possible medical uses of marijuana.[54]
A concerted effort is indicated for full-scale investigations where
knowledge is lacking. Acute and chronic effects of cannabis should be
restudied by modern methods. Metabolic pathways of action and
detoxification need exploration by the pharmaceutical means of today.
Chronic toxicity studies must be undertaken to examine possible long-
term effects of cannabis use. (Cunningham in 1893 found no gross
central nervous system changes with chronic administration of hemp
drugs to primates over several months.[8])
Medical science must again confront the problems of cannabis'
insolubility in water and its variable strength. Since human and
animal responses vary a great deal, individual doses must be titrated.
The popular "double blind" type of study methods will require revision.
The reporting of personal drug experience was once acceptable to the
scientific community.[15, 22, 25, 29, 34, 39, 44] Humans who are drug
"sophisticates" will again become indispensable to psychoactive drug
research, as wine tasters are to the wine industry, for only humans can
verbally report the subtle and complex effects of these substances.
Government agencies having stimulated little significant clinical
research in this field, the pharmaceutical industry should take the
initiative in starting basic research and clinical studies into the
purified congeners of cannabis for their chemical properties,
pharmacologic qualities and therapeutic applications.
"Possible Therapeutic Applications of
Tetrahydrocannabinols and Like Products"
Analgesic-hypnotic [16, 18, 19, 23, 25, 27,33, 45]
Appetite stimulant [18, 25, 27]
Antiepileptic-antispasmodic [9, 18, 27, 33, 40, 45, 49]
Prophylactic and treatment of the neuralgias, including migraine
and tic douloureux [3, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 25, 28, 31, 33, 38, 40, 45]
Antidepressant-tranquilizer [6, 16, 18, 19, 23, 25, 31, 33, 40, 45]
Antiasthmatic [18, 25, 45]
Oxytocic [25, 45]
Antitussive [3, 16, 25, 38, 45]
Topical anesthetic [8]
Withdrawal agent for opiate and alcohol addiction [5, 23, 24, 38,
42, 45, 47, 50, 51]
Childbirth analgesic [12]
Antibiotic [7]
Intraocular hypotensive [56]
Hypothermogenic [48]
Medicine, being an empiric art, has not hesitated in the past to
utilize a substance first used for recreational purposes, (Morton
"discovered" ether for anesthetic purposes after observing medical
students at "ether frolics" in 1846. [Howard W. Haggard: "Devils,
Drugs and Doctors," Harper and Row, New York, 1929, p. 99.]) in the
pursuit of the more noble purposes of healing, relieving pain and
teaching us more of the workings of the human mind and body. The
active constituents of cannabis appear to have remarkably low acute and
chronic toxicity factors and might be quite useful in the management of
many chronic disease conditions. More reasonable laws and regulations
controlling psychoactive drug research are required to permit
significant medical inquiry to begin so that we can fill the large gaps
in our knowledge of cannabis.
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The Herald (Monday, February 15, 1993:
SCIENTIST SAYS CANNABIS WILL BE USED TO TREAT BRAIN DISORDERS
A SCOTISH scientist has said it is only a matter of time before
cannabis is used to treat brain related disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease.
Dr Roger Pertwee, who is leading research into the drug, says marijuana
will stop being regarded as a drug of abuse and become a substance which can be
used positively.
Dr Pertwee, of Aberdeen University's department of bio-medical science,
has been studying cannabis since the late 1960s, and is secretary of the
International Cannabis Research Society.
He and collegues in Israel have discovered a naturally occurring
compound in the body which mimics the effects of cannabis on the brain.
The genetic material, he sasys, produces what are known as cannabis
receptors which affect certain parts of the brain in exactly the same way as
cannabis.
The effect is most marked in those parts of the brain which deal with
memory loss, muscle movement and body temperature, all of which are affected by
cannabis.
Scientists in the United States "cloned" the genetic compound last
year.
Dr Pertwee says the receptors are found in the brain areas where it is
known that cannabis produces many of its effects.
"They are not found in equal amounts throughout the brain, and there
is a good correlation between where they are found and the effects which we
know cannabis has.
"The cannabis field has moved away from the drug abuse side of things.
It has expanded in a very exciting way, so we are not dealing just with
pharmacology but with physiology.
"We are actually now dealing with a substance which affects us all, not
just the few people who take cannabis for recreational purposes."
Dr Pertwee said it could be that the genetic substance is helping the
human memory to function properly, and having a controlling or modulatory role
on the brain.
"Moving on from there, it could be that we find out more about how
certain diseases occur, and we could maybe find new ways of treating diseases."
He said that, when looking at potential positive uses, there are clues
in the effects which cannabis has on certain body functions.
"It has an effect on perception, it has an effect on mood and on the
ability to move the muscles, memory, to name just a few. So possibly it might
be used to deal with disorders of those effects.
"Memory and cognition are affected in old age, particularly in
Alzheimer's Disease. It could be that one could use cannabis related compounds
to deal with disorders of those phenomena, like memory and so on."
Dr Pertwee says there is no longer a stigma attached to cannabis
research in the scientific world, although pharmaceutical companies have been
less willing to be seen to be working with cannabis-like substances.
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