In “Ainslie’s Materia Indica,” 2nd vol., we find three notices of this plant and its preparations.
At page 39 “banghie” (Tamul), with the Persian and Hindee synonymes of “beng” and “subjee,” is described as an intoxicating liquor prepared with the leaves of the gunjah or hemp plant.
Under the head “gunjah,” Ainslie gives numerous synonymes, and tells us that the leaves are sometimes prescribed in cases of diarrhœa; and in conjunction with turmeric, onions, and warm gingilie oil, are made into an unction for painful protruded piles. Dr. Ainslie also gives a brief view of the popular uses and botanical characters of the plant.
Majoon, lastly, is described by Dr. Ainslie, page 176, as a preparation of sugar, milk, ghee, poppy seeds, flowers of the datura, powder of nux vomica, and sugar. The true majoon, however, as prepared in Bengal, contains neither datura nor nux vomica. I have already described the process by which it has been manufactured before me.
In the “Journal de Pharmacie,” the most complete magazine in existence on all pharmaceutical subjects, we find hemp noticed in several volumes. In the “Bulletin de Pharmacie,” t. V.A. 1810, p. 400, we find it briefly described by M. Rouyer, apothecary to Napoleon, and member of the Egyptian scientific commission, in a paper on the popular remedies of Egypt. With the leaves and tops, he tells us, collected before ripening, the Egyptians prepare a conserve, which serves as the base of the berch, the diasmouk, and the bernaouy. Hemp leaves reduced to powder, and incorporated with honey or stirred with water, constitute the berch of the poor classes. The same work also (Bulletin, vol. i., p. 523, A. 1809) contains a very brief notice of the intoxicating preparations of hemp, read by M. De Sacy before the Institute of France, in July, 1809. M. De Sacy’s subsequent analysis of Makrizi, of which I have given an outline, is, however, much more copious in details than the article in the Bulletin.
Professor Royle in his admirable work, entitled “Illustrations of the Botany, &c. of the Himalayas,” p. 334, gives a very brief notice of the synonymes and epithets of the hemp resin, and mentions its intoxicating properties, but affords us no information on its medicinal effects.
Experiments by the Author—Inferences as to the Action of the Drug on Animals and Man.
Such was the amount of preliminary information before me, by which I was guided in my subsequent attempts to gain more accurate knowledge of the action, powers, and possible medicinal applications of this remarkable agent.
There was sufficient to show that hemp possesses, in small doses, an extraordinary power of stimulating the digestive organs, exciting the cerebral system, of acting also on the generative apparatus. Larger doses, again, were shown by the historical statements to induce insensibility or to act as a powerful sedative. The influence of the drug in allaying pain was equally manifest in all the memoirs referred to. As to the evil sequelæ so unanimously dwelt on by all writers, these did not appear to me so numerous, so immediate, or so formidable, as many which may be clearly traced to over-indulgence in other powerful stimulants or narcotics—viz, alcohol, opium, or tobacco.
The dose in which the hemp preparations might be administered, constituted, of course, one of the first objects of inquiry. Ibn Beitar had mentioned a direm, or forty-eight grains of churrus; but this dose seemed to me so enormous, that I deemed it expedient to proceed with much smaller quantities. How fortunate was this caution, the sequel will sufficiently denote.