INDIA: Cannabis is mentioned as a "remedy" in the oldest Ayurvedic medical texts. Its use in traditional medicine seems to date back to the 2nd millennium BC.
CHINA: 1st century BC. AD Hemp is mentioned in the oldest pharmacopoeia, the Pen Ts'ao, as beneficial for "female disorders, gout, rheumatism, malaria, constipation and mental weakness". Traditionally it is claimed that the texts of this book date back to the third millennium BC.
ROME: I century AD Dioscorides ("Materia Medica") considers it worthwhile for earache, oedema, jaundice and other ailments. II century AD Galen recommends it against flatulence, earache and pain in general. Used in excess, it "hits the head, introducing hot and intoxicating vapours".
The Modern (Re)Discovery
1621: Robert Burton ("Anatomy of Melancholy") refers to the possible use of Cannabis in what we now call "depression".
1682: According to the New London Dispensatory", it cures cough and jaundice but fills the head with vapours".
1764: New English Dispensatory- boil the hemp roots and apply the decoction on the skin to reduce inflammation and "dry out tumours" and dissolve "deposits in the joints".
1839: William B. O'Shaughnessy, an English physician transplanted to India, publishes an article on medical uses in that country: "On the preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah". It details the use of Cannabis in the following conditions: acute and chronic rheumatism, hydrophobia, cholera, tetanus and childhood convulsions. After mentioning the "delirium" caused by chronic intoxication, he reports the methods for preparing the extract and tincture of "Gunjah" and the dosages recommended in the various cases.
1845: The French psychiatrist J.-J. Moreau de Tours publishes "Du haschisch et de l'alienation mental". It considers Cannabis a tool for investigating the mind and as an effective drug in various mental illnesses.
1854: Cannabis is included for the first time in the US Dispensatory termed as "powerful narcotic. It is also said to act as a strong aphrodisiac, which stimulates the appetite and occasionally induces a state of catalepsy. Produces sleep, relieves spasms, calms nervous restlessness, relieves pain. It differs from opium (as an analgesic) in that it does not decrease appetite, does not reduce secretions and does not cause constipation. The disorders for which it was specially recommended are neuralgia, gout, tetanus, hydrophobia, epidemic cholera, convulsions, chorea, hysteria, mental depression, insanity, and uterine haemorrhages ".
1860: The Ohio Medical Association appoints a "Cannabis Indica Committee". Cannabis is declared beneficial for tetanus, neuralgia, postpartum haemorrhages, pain in childbirth, dysmenorrhea, convulsions, rheumatic pains, asthma, postpartum psychosis, chronic cough, gonorrhoea, chronic bronchitis, gastric pain. It is also recommended as a sleeping pill and as a drug capable of stimulating appetite.
1886: HCJ Wood ("Treatise on Therapeutics" ). Cannabis is "mainly used for pain relief. To calm states of restlessness and general malaise; to alleviate suffering in incurable diseases, such as end-stage consumption; and finally as a mild sleeping pill ".
1887: HA Hare ("Therapeutic Gazette" ). Cannabis is above all useful as an analgesic, comparable in effectiveness to opium, particularly in migraine, even in otherwise intractable cases. It also acts as a prophylactic, in neuralgia, in irritative cough, and a tranquillizer-analgesic in patients with tuberculosis. Furthermore, it would also be an effective local anaesthetic, particularly in dentistry.
1887: The Lancet recommends the use of Indian hemp "night and day, and continued for some time" as "the best remedy available in the treatment of persistent headache".
1890: JR Reynolds ("The Lancet") summarizes 30 years of experience with Cannabis and considers it "incomparable" in efficacy in senile insomnia; useful as an analgesic in neuralgia, including that of the trigeminal (tic douloureux), in tabe, migraine and dysmenorrhea (but not in sciatica, lumbago and in general in arthritis, as in gout and in "hysterical pains"); very effective in muscle spasms of both epileptoid and choreic nature (but not in true epilepsy); and instead of uncertain value in asthma, depression and alcoholic delirium.
1900: In Italy, both the extract and the tincture of Cannabis indica are foreseen by the Official Pharmacopoeia (FU).
1915: PE Alessandri ("Drugs and medicinal plants"). Indian hemp "used in tetanus, neuralgia, hysteria, migraine, rheumatism, chorea, asthma, and in many other diseases not excluding cholera, but almost always giving contradictory results".
1916: William Osler Of "The principles and practice of medicine". Cannabis is "probably the most satisfying remedy" for migraine.
1949: P. Mascherpa ("Treatise on pharmacology and pharmacognosy"). It is "a brain medicine and precisely an analgesic analogous to opium and morphine", which can have more or less the same uses like these. However, the pharmacology of Cannabis is "little known", and its use for various reasons "rather limited".
The Latest Discoveries
1964: Gaoni and Mechoulam isolate delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the most essential active ingredient in Cannabis. Later it will be discovered that Cannabis contains over 60 cannabinoids.
1986: Howlett: THC must act via a membrane receptor based on the G protein, a mechanism similar to that of opioids.
1990: Matsuda isolates and clones the receptor (coupled to G protein as expected) from the rat cerebral cortex. Binding to THC activates adenyl cyclase, inhibits calcium channels and facilitates potassium channels. Two subgroups of receptors, CB1 and CB2, will then be recognized.
1992: Devane isolates the first endocannabinoid from the pig's brain and calls it anandamide.
