termined that I would experiment upon myself [and] test the power of this drug. I took a full dose at 11 o'clock in the forenoon." Hashish taken orally is much slower-acting than smoked hashish, and Dr. Grover felt nothing for about three hours. Then the drug "manifested its peculiar witchery with scarcely prelude or warning." Dr. Grover remarked to his friends, sitting at the dining room table with him: It is undoubtedly here a day of jubilation or of something in the way of celebration. You perceive that the tables are set with golden plate, that the waiters all seem to be dressed in velvet costumes, and that hundreds of canary birds are singing in gilded cages. It must be a celebration of a good deal of magnitude, as the many bands of martial and orchestral music seem all to be playing at once. The occasional use of cannabis for recreational purposes continued into the twentieth century. One New York City physician, Dr. Victor Robinson, reported in 1910 that he personally had taken fluid extract of cannabis (U.S.P.) and had on several occasions supplied it to his friend's -in part out of scientific curiosity but also just for fun. General John pershing's troops were said to have brought marijuana back with them from Mexico where they were chasing Pancho Villa in 1915. "Old persons in Kentucky report seeing colored field hands break up and load their pipes with dried flowering tops of the plants and smoke them," Dr. J. D. Reichard of Lexington, Kentucky told a scientific meeting in 1943. In short, marijuana was readily available in the United States through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its effects were known, and it was occasionally used for recreational purposes. But use was at best limited, local, and temporary. Not until after 1920 did marijuana come into general use-and not until the 1960s did it become a popular drug. Bibliography none Word Count: 3186 ...
