A Brief History of Medical Weed

Cannabis has been used for medical purposes long before it’s been used for getting high. We’re talking about thousands of years. In other words, we’re just discovering what the ancient people already knew – marijuana is an adjuvant in many illnesses.

In the following, we’ll present a short history of weed as a medical plant. Many people don’t know marijuana has such an illustrious history. This is one of the main reasons why so much dirt is thrown at it.

 It appears that medical marijuana became a thing in approximately 500 BC, in Asia. Prior to that period, it had been used for manufacturing textiles and as an entheogen used by shamans during rituals.

Hua Tuo, a Chinese physician and surgeon used the plant for anesthetic purposes while performing surgery. He ground the plant and mixed it up with wine. Today, cannabis can still be used this way.

Afterward, weed was used as a painkiller, treatment for poisoning, demulcent, nausea and as anthelmintic medication.

Cannabis was first described in 1550 BC, in a papyrus. It seems like the ancient Egyptians used it as a painkiller for hemorrhoids, in the form of suppositories. They also used it to combat inflammation, low mood, and even cancer.

In fact, the Egyptians are the first people that discovered this terrible disease. The Egyptians ate the marijuana flowers or seeds. Many mummies were found, upon discovery, with weed in their stomachs.

At this stage, marijuana was known to aid in a variety of illnesses. Actually, medical cannabis was used for epilepsy during this time, something we’ve just discovered a couple of years ago.

The Muslims also used it for depression (after a physician wandered off on a field and got back all happy), inflammation, fever, and pain. Believe it or not, weed was held in high regards in the Islamic Golden Age.

The use of weed as a medicine in the modern world started in the middle of the 19^thcentury when an uncountable array of medicines contained ground or leaves of cannabis.

Gradually, it looked like there was nothing weed couldn’t alleviate. However, detractors didn’t let themselves be missed, so throughout the years, medical cannabis was kicked off as a pseudo-medicine and was banned.

Even worse still, it was deemed a “drug”, no less harmful than cocaine or other hard drugs. Fortunately, that’s a thing of the past now, or at least we hope it is because the benefits of this miraculous almost cure-all cannot be denied anymore.

Obviously, we could not enclose the entire history of medical cannabis in such a short article. There is a huge amount of intelligence on its use since the dawn of time. You can do some research on your own.

You’ll see that cannabis is by no means a “modern” plant. It’s anything but, really. As mentioned before, our ancient ancestors knew things we’re just discovering. But then again, their connection to the earth and its fruits was so much stronger than ours.