Historical Uses

In 1890, Sir John Russell Reynolds, MD, physician to Queen Victoria, published an account of using cannabis to treat senile dementia in the British medical journal The Lancet. Reynolds described using a Cannabis indica extract.

He wrote: “In senile insomnia, with wandering; where an elderly person probably with brain-softening, in the ‘delirium form’ (Durand-Fardel) is fidgety at night, goes to bed, gets up again, and fusses over his clothes and his drawers . . . but may be quite rational during the day, with its stimuli and real occupations. In this class of case I have found nothing comparable in utility to a moderate dose of Indian hemp-viz., one-quarter to one-third of a grain of the extract, given at bedtime. It has been absolutely successful for months, and indeed years, without any increase of the dose.”2 Reynolds’s account is a classic example of using cannabis to calm and mildly sedate a patient with Alzheimer’s-like dementia.