Page 11

left no account of his hasheesh experiences.38 Altogether, California’s cannabis literature amounts to just a few brief references, hardly enough to impart a meaningful impression.39

The best scientific source of information on cannabis in California is West Coast pharmacy and medical journals such as the Pacific Pharmacist and Pacific Drug Review. 40 Most of the references are minor notes or reprints of articles concerning medical use. Unlike the East, where numerous physicians investigated and wrote about cannabis, California was not a center of medical cannabis research.41 By the turn of the century medical interest in cannabis was declining, largely due to uncertainty over its potency, activity, and effects.42 By 1910-14, it was no longer advertised in the Coffin & Redington house organ, San Francisco and Pacific Druggist. A survey of medicinal plants in California by Prof. Albert Schneider of the California College of Pharmacy noted that, while cannabis hemp could be found growing wild in Butte county, the "exact medicinal value of the California-grown plants requires further careful study."43 However, Prof. Schneider was not interested enough to mention cannabis indica in a list of 26 varieties of drug plants being considered for cultivation in California.44

39 One other California bohemian, Charles Warren Stoddard, coyly mentioned a possible encounter with hasheesh on a visit to Egypt. "The April heat was increasing in Grand Cairo. Under its enervating influence, I subsided into a hasheesh frame of mind, and passed my time between the bath and the nargileh, the victim of brief and fitful moods." C.W. Stoddard, Mashallah! A Flight Into Egypt (Appleton, NY 1881), p. 217; also pp. 141-2, 184-5.

40 Unfortunately, many of the pharmacy trade publications from the turn of the century are lost. Following are the survivors to be found in the University of California’s MELVYL library system, which were surveyed for this article: The Pacific Pharmacist (San Francisco, 1907-1918); Pacific Drug Review. (Portland & San Francisco 1905-1915); San Francisco and Pacific Druggist (Coffin & Redington Co., S.F. 1910-4); The Drug Clerk’s Review (San Francisco, incomplete, misc. issues 1911-4, 1918); Pacific Druggist (S.F., incomplete, misc. issues 1892, 1894); and, from the Smithsonian Annex Library, California Druggist (L.A., 1896-1901). The following medical journals were surveyed: Pacific Medical & Surgical Journal (San Francisco, 1858-1915); Occidental Medical Times (Sacramento, 1887-1904), Pacific Record of Medicine and Surgery (San Francisco, 1886-1899), California State Journal of Medicine (San Francisco, 1904-1913), California Medical Journal (Oakland, 1880-1888).

41 Californians are absent from the compilation of biographies of prominent 19th-century cannabis researchers in Tod Mikuriya, Marihuana: Medical Papers 1839-1972 (Medicomp Press, Oakland, CA, 1973), pp. 446-9. The dozen articles about cannabis published in 19th-century California medical journals are reprints or reports from Europe, with the exception of an account, “Poisoning by Strychnia, Successfully Treated by Cannabis,” by Stacy Hemenway, M.D. of Eugene City, Oregon, in the Pacific Medical and Surgical Review 10: 113 (Aug. 1867).

42 "Cannabis Indica has fallen greatly into disuse in this country, and it matters little to us whether the drug is produced in Asia, Africa, or America. Quite possibly this lack of interest has been brought about by our failure to ensure that our preparations are always active." Chem. and Druggist, cited in The Pacific Pharmacist 6:177 ( Nov. 1912).

43 The Pacific Pharmacist 1:467 ( Jan 1908).

44 “Drug Plant Culture in California,” Pacific Pharmacist. 3: 184-94 (Oct. 1909). Although apparently uninterested in medical cannabis, Prof. Schneider later created a stir at the University of California by experimenting upon himself with hashish, “explod[ing] the theory that the drug has a fatal effect upon any but Orientals.” “Professor Takes Hashish; Goes on Scientific Toot: