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  • The oldest book that we have of pharmacopeia, which is a collection of drugs and their uses,

  • is from China. In that book, they have shown, they've discuss the use of marijuana for the

  • treatment of rheumatism, menstrual cramps, even forgetfulness. And there's even like

  • another book called the Ebers Papyrus from Egypt. And some people say that's even older.

  • And that also mentions marijuana. But if you go back, if you go to the modern times, like

  • western medicine that we have today, it really wasn't until the 1830s, 1840s that marijuana

  • or cannabis, as it was called at the time, made its entrance.

  • There was a western doctor named O'Shaughnessy, Dr. O'Shaughnessy who was an Irish physician

  • who actually as a medical student discovered the treatment for cholera by giving people

  • intravenous fluids, hydration, which saved a lot of lives. And then he went to India

  • and laid down telegraph lines across the country and was knighted. But in the meantime and

  • in the midst of all that he learned from local healers about this cannabis medicine and was

  • able to show that it could be used for tetanus and epilepsy, even rabies he was experimenting

  • with. And he published his results and brought cannabis back with him to England and to the

  • United Kingdom. And really it picked up like wildfire. A lot of doctors were using it in

  • their medicines. Even Queen Victoria's doctor, Dr. Reynolds, prescribed it to Queen Victoria

  • for her menstrual cramps.

  • In the United States from the 1830s to the 1940s, for 100 years, it was in our pharmacopeia,

  • our official United States book of approved drugs. Lots of companies like Merck and Eli

  • Lilly that you've heard of today and companies that don't exist today had cannabis or marijuana

  • based medicines that they produced and they put on pharmacy shelves. So at that time they

  • used it for the treatment of cramps and pain, some of the things that we still use are things

  • are know marijuana is useful for today. But, because of the politics and reefer madness

  • and all of the issues around, and also other newer drugs coming on the scene, marijuana

  • kind of fell out of favor and is really now experiencing a resurgence.

The oldest book that we have of pharmacopeia, which is a collection of drugs and their uses,

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