s not to have been employed in medieval Europe as an hallucinogen, it was highly valued in medicine and its therapeutic uses can be traced back to early classical physicians such as Dioscorides and Galen. Medieval herbalists distinguished manured hemp (cultivated) from bastard hemp (weedy), recommending the latter against nodes and wennes and other hard tumors, the former for a host of uses from curing cough to jaundice.They cautioned, however, that in excess it might cause sterility, that it drieth up... the seeds of generation in men and the milke of women's breasts. An interesting use in the sixteenth century -- source of the name Angler's Weed in England -- was locally important: poured into the holes of earthworms [it] will draw them forth and...fisherman and anglers have use this feat to bait their hooks.The value of Cannabis in folk medicine has clearly been closely tied with its euphoric and hallucinogenic properties, knowledge of which may be as old as its use as a source of fiber. Primitive man, trying all sorts of plant materials as food, must have known the ecstatic hallucinatory effects of Hemp, an intoxication introducing him to an other-worldly plant leading to religious beliefs.Thus the plant early was viewed as a special gift of the gods, a sacred medium for communion with the spirit world.Although Cannabis today is the most widely employed of the hallucinogens, its use purely as a narcotic, except in Asia, appears not to be ancient.In classical times its euphoric properties were, however, recognized. In Thebes, Hemp was made into a drink said to have opium-like properties. Galen reported that cakes with Hemp, if eaten to excess, were intoxicating. The use as an inebriant seems to have been spread east and west by barbarian hordes of central Asia, especially the Scythians, who had a profound cultural influence on early Greece and eastern Europe. And knowledge of the intoxicating effects of Hemp goes far back in Indian h...
