Part 2

The hemp grown in Russia is of a fibrous quality, and is largely used for the gallows--to hang the opponents of despotism. In England many a bold highwayman has been embraced by it the last moment of his roving life, and has thus philanthropically given his mother-tongue a chance to enrich herself. For instance, a hempie means a rascal for whom the hemp grows; a hempen collar means the hangman’s noose; a hempen widow means one whose husband has been hanged; to sow hemp means to live in a manner likely to lead to the gallows. Rope, however, is not the only use to which the fibers can be put; they are extensively employed in clothing, and in the manufacture of paper.

The plant is also cultivated for its seeds, which contain a large quantity of oil, and is therefore used in pharmacy for emulsions, and in the domestic arts because of its drying properties. But the seeds are chiefly used as a favorite food for birds. In fact, some birds consume them to excess, which should lead us to suspect that these seeds, tho they cannot intoxicate us, have a narcotic effect on the feathered creatures, making them dream of a happy birdland where there are no gilded cages, and where the men are gunless and the women hatless. The seeds also contain sugar and considerable albumin,--making them very nutritious; rabbits eat them readily. They are consumed also by some human beings, but are not as good as the sunflower seeds which Marianka ceaselessly and carelessly crunched, while Olenine looked upon her moving lips with a lover’s despair.

The medicinal hemp--the hemp with the potent narcotic principles--is Cannabis indica. In this case we have an example of Compensation that would have made Emerson’s eyes glisten, for altho the fibrous texture of hemp disappears under a southern sun, to make up for the loss there is secreted a resin--Churrus. This resin is collected in a most singular manner. During the hot season, according to Dr. O’Shaughnessy, men clothed in leather run violently thru the hemp-fields and brush forcibly against the plants. The soft, sticky resin adheres to the garments, and is later scraped off and kneaded into balls. Dr. M’Kinnon informed Dr. O’Shaughnessy that in the province of Nipal the leather attire is dispensed with, and that the natives run naked thru the hemp fields, gathering the resin on their bare bodies.

When the larger leaves turn brown and fall to the ground, it is an indication of the approach of maturity. The flowering tops are then cut off, and subjected to a process of rolling and treading by trained human feet. The hemp is placed on a hard floor surrounded by a rail; the natives take hold of a revolving post, march around and around, singing the while, and press the plants in a technical manner. Whether the perspiration which drips from their unshod organs of locomotion works any chemical change in the composition of Cannabis has not yet been determined by E. M. Holmes or E. W. Dixon.

It is not surprising to learn that the dealing in Hasheesh is a Government monopoly, and that heavy punishment is meted out to those offenders who buy or sell it without permission. “The importation of it into Egypt is so strongly interdicted,” explains the Dispensatory of the United States, “that the mere possession of it is a penal offense; we found it, however, readily procurable. It is said to be brought into the country in pigs’ bladders, in the Indo-European steamers, and thrown out at night during the passage into the Suez canal, to be picked up by the boats of confederates.” This deplorable state of affairs is apt to remind us of our own temperance towns--where there are always some individuals who possess the faculty of obtaining whisky ad libitum.

Cannabis sativa is a member of the Moraceæ or Mulberry Family, which family was formerly an order of apetalous dicotyledenous trees or shrubs, but is now reduced to a tribe of the Urticaceæ or Nettle Family which embraces 110 genera and 1500 species.

Cannabis is an annual herb, and thus endures but one year, because instead of storing away nutritious matter in underground bulbs and tubers like the industrious biennials or perennials, it exultingly expends its new-born energy in the production of beautiful blossoms and the maturation of fruit and seed. “This completed,” says Asa Gray, “the exhausted and not at all replenished individual perishes.”

Sexually, hemp is diœcious, which means that its staminate and pistillate organs are not on the same plant. When cultivated for its narcotic properties, only the flowering tops of the unfertilized female plants are used, and the male plants are eradicated with great care, as it is claimed that a single one can spoil an entire field--something like a Boccaccion gentleman in a nunnery. The process of weeding out the males is performed by an expert called a poddar, who brings to his work a conscious technical skill, and an unconscious but interesting argument in illustration of what Lester F. Ward has described as the Androcentric World View, for the poddar deliberately reverses the names of the sexes, and designates the useful females as males, and calls the rejected males the females. If we had such impudent poddars in the animal world, no doubt the valuable Miss Jane Addams would be metamorphosed into James, while the unnecessary Mr. Anthony Comstock would be adorned with a feminine appellation.

Cannabis is from 4 to 12 feet in height; its stem is angular, branching, and covered with matted hairs; its leaves are palmate and therefore roughly resemble an open hand; its leaflets are lance-shaped, possessing margins dentated with saw-like teeth; its flowers are yellow and axillary, the male cluster being a raceme and therefore pedicelled, and the female a spike and consequently sessile or stemless; the five male organs or stamens contain pendulous double-celled sacs or anthers; the two female organs or pistils have glandular stigmas, the stigma being the spot where fertilization occurs; the fruit is a gray nut or achene, each containing a single oily seed; the whole plant is covered with a scarcely visible down; the roughness of the leaves and stem is due to the silica, which is a characteristic of the plants of the Moraceæ.

Not much need be said of the microscopical characteristics of hemp, for altho the powder contains several histological elements, as pollen grains, glands, crystals, resin, fibres, vessels, stone cells, epidermis, parenchyma,--indicating presence of stem, leaf, flower, seed,--its characteristic hairs or trichomes with their cystolith deposits are of sufficient diagnostic value to make it readily recognizable.

Unfortunately, when we come to the chemical constituents of Cannabis, certainty is at an end. As Dorvault’s L’Officine says, “La composition chimique du cannabis indica est mal connue.” The conquests of man are peculiar: he lays a cable under the roaring ocean, and he flashes his messages thru limitless miles of space; beneath the surface of the earth he rides on an iron horse, and bird-like he sails thru the trackless air. But put this common drug before him and he cannot determine its chemical composition. The careful experimenters and the expert assayers are balked.

“I have extracted an alkaloid from hasheesh,” says Preobraschensky, “and it is potent.” “No, we have found the active constituent,” say T. and H. Smith; “it is the resin cannabin.” “No,” says Personne, “I have isolated the important ingredient; it is the amber-colored volatile oil, cannabene.” “Oh, no,” says Frankel, “I have discovered the active principle--it is a phenol aldehyde.” “No, indeed,” say Wood, Spivey and Easterfield, “it is we who have separated the only active ingredient--it is a red oil, cannabinol.” “Oh, not at all,” says Hamilton, “not one of these is the active constituent; in fact, the active constituent has not yet been isolated.” In such an arena, where the masters dispute, it behooves the amateur to speak with a stammering tongue.

That doubt should prevail on this subject is all the more remarkable when we consider that hemp has been known from a time whereof the mind of man runneth not to the contrary--to use a phrase which seems to delight the lawyers. In the Odyssey, a thousand years before the advent of the Christian era, Homer sang of the assuager of grief or Nepenthes, which is believed to have been the hemp-plant. Hemp thus comes ushered into history, held in the beautiful hand of Helen. Hesychius narrates that the Thracian women made sheets of hemp. Pliny says hemp was known to the Romans, who manufactured cordage from it. The Father of History relates that the Scythians threw the seeds of hemp on red-hot stones, and bathed themselves in the vapor, crying with exultation. Moschion records that the ship Syracusia, built for Hiero--kinsman of Archimedes--was rigged with hempen ropes. In the most ancient of all Hindu medical works, Susruta, hemp is recommended for catarrh. The Pandit Moodoosudun Gooptu found in the Rajniguntu a clear account of hemp. A Sanskrit work on Materia Medica, Rajbulubha, alludes to the use of hemp in gonorrhea. According to Kamalakantha Vidyalanka, hemp was early forbidden to pious Brahmins. The old Arabic and Persian writers made numerous references to cannabis, and declared its narcotic properties were discovered by Haider. Haider was a rigid monk who built a monastery on the mountains between Nishabor and Ramah. For ten years he never left his hermitage, never indulged in even a fleeting moment’s pleasure. One burning summer’s day when the fiery sun glared angrily upon Mother Earth as if he wished to wither up her breasts, Haider stepped out from his cloister and walked alone to the fields. All around him lay the vegetation weary and without life, but one plant danced in the heat with joy. Haider plucked it, partook of it, and returned to the convent a happier man. The monks who saw him immediately noticed the change in their chief. He encouraged conversation, and acted boisterously. He then led his companions to the fields, and the holy men partook of the hasheesh, and were transformed from austere ascetics into jolly good fellows. At the death of Haider, in conformity with his desire, his disciples planted the hemp in an arbor around his tomb.---- In that portion of the Chinese herbal, Rh-ya, which was written 500 B.C., the seed and flower-bearing kinds of hemp are noticed. In the first century, Dioscorides--the most renowned of the ancient writers on Materia Medica--recommended the seeds in the form of a cataplasm to soothe inflammation. In the second century, Galen wrote that it was customary to give hemp to guests at banquets to promote hilarity and happiness. At the beginning of the third century, the physician Hoa-Thoa used hemp as an anesthetic in surgical operations. In the thirteenth century, garments of hemp became common thruout Southern Europe, and it may well be that Beatrice herself wore it when Dante first saw the maiden in her father’s house.

There is a remarkable episode in the history of Hasheesh, indicating how the character of a people may be affected by the surrounding vegetation. Mohammedanism, like all other theologies, has been rent by schisms, and the question as to who was the legitimate successor of the Prophet split this Oriental faith into two great sects--the Sunnis and the Shiahs. The latter were the heretics, as they considered Mohammed’s son-in-law the true imam. The Shiahs themselves were further subdivided into several parties, the Ismaelites being the most important. The Ismaelites were especially powerful in Persia, and later--thru the instrumentality of an escaped prisoner who seized the throne--gained a firm foothold in Egypt. A grand lodge was formed in the city of Cairo--on the banks of the river whose ancient waters heard the hammering at the quarries for the rearing of the Great Pyramid. Many rules were now made by the Ismaelites, and the petty race of perishable men was much flustered, while the immortal Nile flowed indifferently from its equatorial cradle, refreshing the crimson water-lilies, bathing the reeds that lined its shore, and wetting the sands where the thoughtful Sphinx opens not its lips.

In the course of time this lodge was visited by the clever Ismaelite, Hassan Ben Sabbah--a boyhood friend of Omar Khayyám--who was received with acclamation. Hassan soon received enough honors to excite jealousy, and while plotting for more power was defeated and forced to disappear from Egypt, but, after traveling awhile, he settled near Kuhistan. He gathered around him a considerable number of followers, and by strategy, in 1090, captured the powerful Persian fortress of Alamut. Hassan now introduced a new feature into his society--the employment of secret murder against all enemies. It was the Sheikh of this organization who loomed large in medieval folk-lore as the Old Man of the Mountains. Many young men became disciples, and willingly performed the bloody work. These youths were known as the Fedais or Devoted Ones. When a Devoted One was selected to commit murder, he was first stupefied with hasheesh, and while in this state was brought into the magnificent gardens of the sheikh. All the sensual and stimulating pleasures of the erotic orient surrounded the excited youth, and exalted by the delicious hypnotic he had taken, the hot-blooded fanatic felt that the gates of heaven were already ajar, and heard them swing open on their golden hinges. When the effect of the drug disappeared and the Devoted One was reduced to his normal condition, he was informed that thru the generosity of his superior he had been permitted to foretaste the delights of Paradise. The Devoted One believed this readily enough--disciples are always credulous--and therefore was eager to die or to kill at a word from his master. From these hasheesh-eaters, the Arabian name of which is hashshashin, was derived the term “assassin.” It is not known at what date the epithet was first applied to other secret slayers. The Assassins soon became a terrible scourge, and the very sands of the desert almost learnt to tremble before them. Many an unprepared breast felt their daggers, and many a surprised stomach tried in vain to vomit up their poisons. Prince and calif they struck down, and more than one haughty chief paid tribute to the Old Man of the Mountains. During the invasion of Palestine by the Crusaders, the Syrian branch of the Assassins reached its bloody zenith, and who shall say how many high-born damsels wept for knightly shields that lay low in the dust of Lebanon? The power of the Assassins was destroyed in Persia about the middle of the thirteenth century, and some years later the Mameluke sultan of Egypt exterminated them in Syria. But just as there are still some Innsbruck Jesuits who pray for the revival of the Spanish Inquisition, so some remnants of the Assassins yet linger between the Tigris river and the mount of Taurus--but what of that? The Old Man of the Mountains now sleeps in Death’s Valley, and not all the hasheesh from Bengal could exalt him.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, when Napoleon invaded Egypt--and grew philosophic as he met the gaze of the prehistoric pyramids--hasheesh was brought prominently to the notice of Europeans by the accounts of DeSacy and Rouger. By this time its narcotic properties must have been known to the Occidentals, for as far back as 1690 Berlu in his Treasury of Drugs described it as “of an infatuating quality and pernicious use.” Nevertheless, its introduction into the Pharmacopeias of Europe and the United States is due mainly to the elaborate experimentation carried on during 1839 and several succeeding years by the talented Dr. William B. O’Shaughnessy, Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of Calcutta.

This brings us to the physiological action of Cannabis. It primarily stimulates the brain, has a mydriatic effect upon the pupil, slightly accelerates the pulse, sometimes quickens and sometimes retards breathing, produces a ravenous appetite, increases the amount of urine, and augments the contractions of the uterus. In other words, it has an effect on the nervous, respiratory, circulatory, digestive, excretory and genito-urinary systems.

As a therapeutic agent hasheesh has its eulogizers, tho like many other drugs it has been replaced by later remedies in various disorders for which it was formerly used. Old drugs, like old folks, must give way to the new, and even the therapeutic master-builders must beware when the young generation of healing-agents knocks on the door of health.

In medicinal doses Cannabis is used as an aphrodisiac, for neuralgia, to quiet maniacs, for the cure of chronic alcoholism and morphine and chloral habits, for mental depression, hysteria, softening of the brain, nervous vomiting, for distressing cough, for St. Vitus’ dance, and for the falling sickness so successfully simulated by Kipling’s Sleary--epileptic fits of a most appalling kind. It is used in spasm of the bladder, in migraine, and when the dreaded Bacillus tetanus makes the muscles rigid. It is a uterine tonic, and a remedy in the headaches and hemorrhages occurring at the final cessation of the menses. It has been pressed into the service of the diseases that mankind has named in honor of Venus. According to Osler, cannabis is sometimes useful in locomotor ataxia. Christison reports a case in which Cannabis entirely cured the intense itching of eczema, while the patient was enjoying the delightful slumber which the hemp induced. It is much employed as an hypnotic in those cases where opium because of long-continued use has lost its efficiency. As a specific in hydrophobia it is sometimes marvelous, for Dr. J. W. Palmer writes that he himself has seen a sepoy, an hour before furiously hydrophobic, under the influence of cannabis drinking water freely and pleasantly washing his face and hands! Its function in this unspeakable affliction should be investigated carefully, for it will be a gala day for mankind when it can cease to fear Montaigne’s terrible line: “The saliva of a wretched dog touching the hand of Socrates, might disturb and destroy his intellect.”

The official definition of Cannabis indica as given by the Eighth Decennial Revision of our Pharmacopeia is as follows: “The dried flowering tops of the pistillate plants of Cannabis sativa Linné (Fam. Moraceæ), grown in the East Indies and gathered while the fruits are yet undeveloped, and carrying the whole of their natural resin.” Three preparations of the drug are official: an Extract, a Fluid-extract, and a Tincture.

In the last (third) edition of the National Formulary, hemp enters into four galenicals: in chloral and bromine compound which is used as a sedative and hypnotic, in chloroform Anodyne which is used in diarrhoea and cholera, in Brown Sequard’s anti-neuralgic pills, and in corn collodion. Hemp is a constituent in the majority of corn remedies. Not many drugs are used for both the brain and the feet, but with cannabis we have this anomaly: a man may see visions by swallowing his corn-cure.

Out of the enormous number of prescriptions in which hasheesh enters as an ingredient, only half a dozen can be here represented. In Hager’s Pharmaceutische Praxis occurs this prescription for gonorrhea:

=℞= Kali nitrici Natri nitrici ana 5,0 Extracti Hyoscyami 0,5 Aquæ Amygdalarum amararum 10,0 Emulsionis Cannabis fructus 200,0

For dysmenorrhea the Journal de Médecine de Paris recommends the following suppositories, with the directions that one be introduced every evening, commencing with the fifth day before the menses:

=℞= Ex. cannab. indicæ gr. ¼ Ex. belladonnæ gr. ¼ Ol. theobrom. q. s.--M.

For phthisis, when accompanied by insomnia and nervous dyspepsia, Dr. S. G. Bonney prescribes:

=℞= Strychnin, sulph. gr. ⅔ Extracti opii gr. j Extracti cannabis indicæ gr. j ss Salolis gr. c. Aloini gr. ss.--M. Pone in capsulas No. xx

Dr. Rankin fights dyspepsia with the following formula, one capsule being given after meals: