On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah (Cannabis Indica) / Their Effects on the Animal System in Health, and Their Utility in the Treatment of Tetanus and Other Convulsive Diseases

GUNJAH,
(CANNABIS INDICA).
THEIR EFFECTS ON THE ANIMAL SYSTEM IN HEALTH, AND THEIR UTILITY IN THE TREATMENT OF TETANUS AND OTHER CONVULSIVE DISEASES.
W. B. O’SHAUGHNESSY, M.D.,
BENGAL ARMY,
Late Professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica in the Medical College of Calcutta.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. TAYLOR, 6, CHANDOS-STREET, STRAND.
The narcotic effects of hemp are popularly known in the South of Africa, South America, Turkey, Egypt, Asia Minor, India, and the adjacent territories of the Malays, Burmese, and Siamese. In all these countries hemp is used in various forms, by the dissipated and depraved, as the ready agent of a pleasing intoxication. In the popular medicine of these nations, we find it extensively employed for a multitude of affections, especially those in which spasm or neuralgic pain are the prominent symptoms. But in Western Europe its use, either as a stimulant or as a remedy, is equally unknown. With the exception of the trial, as a frolic, of the Egyptian “hasheesh,” by a few youths in Marseilles, and of the clinical use of the wine of hemp by Hahnemann, as shown in a subsequent extract, I have been unable to trace any notice of the employment of this drug in Europe.
Much difference of opinion exists on the question, whether the hemp so abundant in Europe, even in high northern latitudes, is identical in specific characters with the hemp of Asia Minor and India. The extraordinary symptoms produced by the latter depend on a resinous secretion with which it abounds, and which seems totally absent in the European kind. The closest physical resemblance or even identity exists between both plants; difference of climate seems to me more than sufficient to account for the absence of the resinous secretion, and consequent want of narcotic power in that indigenous in colder countries.
In the subsequent article I first endeavour to present an adequate view of what has been recorded of the early history, the popular uses, and employment in medicine of this powerful and valuable substance; I then proceed to notice several experiments which I have instituted on animals, with the view to ascertain its effects on the healthy system; and, lastly, I submit an abstract of the clinical details of the treatment of several patients afflicted with hydrophobia, tetanus, and other convulsive disorders, in which a preparation of hemp was employed with results, which seem to me to warrant our anticipating from its more extensive and impartial use no inconsiderable addition to the resources of the physician.