Notes

The Sythians have hemp growing in their country

[The Sythians] have hemp growing in their country, very like flax, save that the hemp is by much the thicker and taller. This grows both of itself and also by their sowing, and of it the Thracians even make garments which are very like linen; nor could any, save he were a past master in hemp, know whether they be hempen or linen; whoever has never yet seen hemp will think the garment to be linen.

The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and, creeping under the mats, they throw it on the red-hot stones; and, being so thrown, it smoulders and sends forth so much steam that no Greek vapour-bath could surpass it. The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapour-bath. This serves them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.

fills the Head with noxious and painful Vapours

The Arabs obtained from the pistils of the hemp-blossom in fermentation the drink they call Hashis, which is intoxicating even to madness.

Affects the head

“Like Dioscorides, Galen had little to say about cannabis, but he does state that the Romans, at least those with money, used to top off their banquets with a marijuana-seed dessert, a confectionery treat which left guests with a warm and pleasurable sensation. To be avoided, however, was an overindulgence in this confection, for among the adverse after-effects of too many seeds were dehydration and impotence. Other properties Galen mentions are antiflatulence and analgesia. “If consumed in large amounts,” he says, it “affects the head by sending to it a warm and toxic vapour.”

Galen, De Facultatibus Alimentorum 100.49.

Notes