Pick Your Poison

Provings of cannabis indica

In this homeopathy report, members of the American Provers’ Union, a collective of physicians who tried to better understand the effects of drugs by taking them themselves, give accounts of their experiences of marijuana at various doses. They list both positive and negative effects, including happiness, feeling weightless, giddiness, anguish and despair, a burning sensation in the abdomen, low pulse, fever, and itchiness. In the mid-19th century, marijuana was available in many patent medicines without a prescription.