On the natural history, action, and uses of Indian hemp / by Alexander Christison.
- Christison, Alex. (Alexander)
- Date:
- 1851
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the natural history, action, and uses of Indian hemp / by Alexander Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![INDIAN HEMP. Indian hemp ^ has been long known in India, Persia, and other Eastern countries as a medicinal and intoxicating agent, but was little known to Europeans until it was brought prominently into notice by Dr O'Shaughnessy of Calcutta, in the year 1839. [On Indian Hemp, &c.; Calcutta, 1839.] The ancients were almost ignorant of its virtues. The Greek physicians, as we are told by DToscorides, were acquainted with the emollient properties of the seeds of hemp ; but they seem to have been wholly unaware of the narcotic virtues of the plant (Diosc. iv. civ.). Galen and his contemporaries were not much more in- formed on the subject; for that author merely speaks of its seeds being sometimes used as a whet after supper, to create a desire for wine, but condemns the practice, because, when used freely, they heat the system and cause determination towards the head (Opera, ii. 53, Edit. Basilise, 1549 ; De Facultatibus Alimentorum, c. xlix.). It is alleged, however, that hemp was known at an early period to the Chinese. In a communication to the Academic des Sciences in 1849, extracts are produced from a Chinese work, showing that so far back as a.d. 220, a Chinese physician, named Hoa-Tho, pro- duced insensibility in his patients by means of a preparation of hemp, and that operations were then performed without pain to the Y)aiier\t (Stanislas JuUen, inComptes B,endus,&c., 1849, p. 197). This statement would, however, require further confirmation. There seems little doubt that in the year 600 the Hindoos were in the habit of employing hemp ; and that it has been in constant use ever since as a means of allaying pain, and more particularly as an intoxicating agent, among the inhabitants of the East. Its properties have been alluded to by various good European authorities several centuries ago, but by no one more distinctly than in 1695 by Rumphius, who describes its eifects from personal obser- vation at Amboyna. He says that throughout India the leaves and seeds are extensively used to dispel anxiety and to excite agreeable dreams ; that a maniacal state sometimes ensues ; that he has known it cause, when smoked with tobacco, a frantic pugnacity in some, ^ This is an abstract of an Inaugural Dissertation, for which one of the prizes of the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh was awarded in August](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21475349_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
