Heroes in Drug Policy pt. 1: William O’Shaughnessy
The Man Who Introduced Cannabis to Western Medicine
Legalization advocates like to point out how cannabis was routinely used for medical purposes in the not-so-distant past. A common bullet-point many of them like to mention is that even the otherwise prudish Queen Victoria used the substance to alleviate her painful menstrual cramps. That is probably true. And even if Her Majesty did not partake, cannabis was widely available as an over-the-counter remedy during the Victorian era. But how did this come to be? How did a drug popular among Asians and Africans enter the western pharmacopeia? It is all thanks to one man, a brilliant but largely forgotten scientist named William O’Shaughnessy.
O’Shaughnessy was born in Ireland in 1809 to a family of moderate means. His brilliance was evident even as a child, and by 18-years of age, he was admitted into one of the best medical schools at the time, the University of Edinburgh, earning his MD in 1929. He moved to London but was unable to obtain a license to practice medicine. So he set up a forensic lab, testing bodily fluid and tissue samples for hospitals and law enforcement.
Early in his career, O’Shaughnessy did research on cholera, which was a major cause of death in filthy, polluted 19th century London. The microörganism that causes the disease would not be discovered until 1883, and even the way it is transmitted — through contact with sewer water — was not known until 1849. But in 1831 O’Shaughnessy determined how cholera killed its victims, and thus how it could be treated. He analyzed the blood and urine of cholera patients and found that they were unusually low in electrolytes, indicating that cholera caused potentially fatal dehydration. The disease could thus be treated with intravenous fluids. (I’m not sure how they did that 30 years before the invention of the hypodermic needle. It was probably a rather messy affair, but it worked.)
For his efforts, he was awarded a position with the British East India Company in 1833. He moved to Calcutta where he helped to found the Calcutta Medical College and worked as a chemist, pharmacologist, and professor. He made many important contributions in all of these areas, finding an easier way to make gun powder, discovering a new alkaloid in opium, and writing medical textbooks. But his most important work, at least from a drug policy perspective, was his work with a plant that the natives referred to as ganja and would come to be known as “Indian hemp” in Europe and America.
O’Shaughnessy mingled with native Indians, making friends with Indian physicians, scientists, and folk healers. He even learned to speak a bit of Bengali. He was especially interested in finding indigenous plants that could be used to make inexpensive medicines for the poor. This led him to ganja (marijuana), which was used by all classes in India for treating a wide variety of ailments. Though not unknown to Europeans, there was very little information about the drug in the western scientific literature–just some trip reports from poets and artists who frequent the Club des Hashischins in Paris. O’Shaughnessy thus took it upon himself to test the safety and efficacy of the drug.
He started with animals, to ensure it was safe, before moving on to human test subjects. His experiments showed that cannabis was effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis, relieving pain and inflammation, as well as preventing epileptic seizures. He also demonstrated that it was effective in treating the muscle spasm caused by tetanus and rabies. It did not cure either of these conditions but provided significant relief. O’Shaughnessy’s work inspired other scientists and doctors to conduct research on cannabis. From 1840 to 1900 there were over one hundred articles published in scientific and medical journals describing the medical uses of the plant (…knowledge that would come to be suppressed in the 20th century.)
O’Shaughnessy also noted some of the bad side effects of cannabis, such as paranoia. He thus encouraged cautious dosing. This was especially important because at the time, they did not know the active ingredient, let alone how to isolate it or even measure it. Thus, different batches of medicinal cannabis varied significantly in strength. Eventually, he wrote a book on the pharmaceutical properties of plants in the Bengal region, with 25 page devoted to cannabis.
In 1841 O’Shaughnessy returned to England, bringing with him samples of cannabis as well as seeds, thus introducing this fabulous medicine to western society. He soon teamed up with pharmacist Peter Squire to develop cannabis tinctures, which would come to be sold over-the-counter at drug stores throughout Europe and the U.S. Sir Russell Reynolds, personal physician to Queen Victoria, read O’Shaughnessy’s work and became a vocal advocate of medical cannabis, which is how it ended up in Queen Victoria’s medicine cabinet.
O’Shaughnessy was knighted by the Queen in 1856. But, interestingly, it was not for his discovery of cannabis or anything having to do with medicine or pharmacology. O’Shaughnessy had a second career as an engineer that was equally as successful as his first career in medicine and chemistry. In 1838, while working for the British East India Company, he installed underwater cables to carry telegraph signals under Calcutta’s Hooghly River, the world’s first (successful) underwater telegraphy. In 1844 he returned for a second tour of duty in India, this time to supervise the building of a vast network of telegraph wires, the first telegraph system in Asia. It was this work for which he was knighted.
William O’Shaughnessy was probably not a moral exemplar, but I think we can still call him a hero nonetheless. Though not much is known about his personal life or political views, his work on India’s telegraph system helped to strengthen Britain’s colonial rule over India. (Not cool.) Nevertheless, he was an exemplary scientist — curious, open-minded, creative, and meticulous in his experimental methods. More importantly, his work in medicine helped alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousand of people in western Europe and America. Thanks to him, cannabis came to be an important part of the medical pharmacopeia in the west for almost 100 years until it was banned for purely political (and shockingly racist) reasons.
