MEDICAL STRAIN OF THE MONTH
Every Seed Bearing Plant Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit in it. – Genesis 1:29-30
In historian Chris Bennett’s book, “Cannabis and Culture,” he states the plant frequently shows up in the Old Testament (Exodus 30:23), when God commands Moses to make a Holy Anointing Oil of myrrh, sweet cinnamon, kaneh bosm, and kassia. Bennett writes the word kaneh bosm translates into Hebrew as
kannabos, or kannabus, meaning “with the root”,”kaneh” meaning “reed” or “hemp”, while “bosm” translates to “aromatic”. Bennett also penned The Soma Solution in an effort to explain the biblical beginnings of the Kaneh-Bosm plant mentioned in the Old Testament. “The word kaneh-bosm has been mistranslated as calamus, a common marsh plant with little monetary value. It does not have the qualities or value ascribed to
kaneh-bosm” he clarified,“The error occurred in the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint in the third century BC, and was repeated in the many translations that followed.” Bennett points to further evidence of cannabis in the Bible via Polish etymologist Sula Benet from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences in Warsaw. She’s expounded on several biblical mentions, stating, “The sacred character of hemp in biblical times is evident from Exodus 30:22-33, where
Moses was instructed by God to anoint the meeting tent and all its furnishings with a specially prepared oil, containing hemp.” The Lord said to Moses, “Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of kannabosm, 500 shekels of cassia – all according to the sactuary shekel – and a hind of olive oil. Make these into sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil.”
Cannabis in Modern Times William Brooke O’Shaughnessy graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1829. Traveling to India by 1831, he began working with the East India Trading Company as a physician. There he developed the technique of intravenous electrolyte therapy, successfully treating Cholera. He also introduced the telegraph to the country, but his discoveries regarding the medicinal properties of cannabis would change the way the world viewed plants as medicine forever. O’Shaughnessy tested the effects of various preparations on animals, then humans. Finding it safe, he administered it to his patients. He found cannabis had analgesic and sedative properties, treating rheumatism, quelling convulsions in an infant, and miraculously stopping severe spasms from tetanus and rabies. In 1839 O’Shaughnessy wrote his first paper on cannabis as medicine, reporting on the plant’s low toxicity, and effectiveness with pain relief, appetite stimulation, and ataraxia, as well as its antibiotic properties. His first publication was an impressive, break through, fourty page document. The medical cannabis journal O’Shaughnessy’s is the longest running weed publication in the world today.
REFERENCE MATERIAL: Dr. Rafael Mechoulam, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products; Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, paincenter.
huji.ac.il/mechoulam.htm
The Soma Solution, Chris Bennett,
www.amazon.com/Cannabis-Soma-Solution-Chris-Bennett/dp/0984185801 Cannabis & Culture, Chris Bennett
www.cannabisculture.com/node/18935
Marijuana in Medicine (paper) Dr. Todd Mikuriya
mikuriyamedical.com/about/can_write.html Old Testament
www.lds.org/scriptures/ot?lang=eng O’Shaughnessy’s
www.beyondthc.com/ Author, Steve Hagar
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hager
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ISSUE 47 THE TRAVEL ISSUE dopemagazine.com
By the mid to late 1800s cannabis was used commonly throughout Western medicine. The Committee on Cannabis Indica within the Ohio State Medical Society published a report in 1860 stating successes in treating stomach pain, childbirth psychosis, chronic cough, and even gonorrhea. Dr. Fronmueller of Fuerth, Ohio expounded on its use, “I have used hemp many hundred times to relieve local pains of inflammatory as well as neuralgic nature, and judging from these experiments, I have to assign to the Indian hemp a place among the so-called hypnotic medicines next to opium; its effects are less intense, and the secretions are not so