Lessons from the First Golden Era of the Cannabis Pharmacy: 1830-1937

A lecture brought to you by the Cannabis Museum in Athens, Ohio

Our ancestors depended on cannabis as a valued medicine, food, and fiber. Cannabis. Cannabis was the third-most prescribed drug in the apothecary era. Cannabis was incorporated into the products of the early pharmaceutical companies. This ended quickly with the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.  This history was purposefully hidden during the enforcement of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. The result was a loss of knowledge of the fine techniques of growing, harvesting, and processing hemp and the medical uses of “marijuana”.

The Cannabis Museum has preserved and documented more than 1000 pre-1937 cannabis products along with pharmaceutical catalogs and contemporary literature of the day. Our collection demonstrates how much medical practitioners one hundred years ago knew about cannabis and its various uses. Practitioners of the day were adept at the use of cannabis, differentiating CBD and THC varieties and understanding the use of the combination, tincturing and concentrates, decarboxylation, dosing, and even the treatment of addiction and overdoses of other medicines.