The `homelie herbe': Vivienne Crawford examines the medicinal history of cannabis in Britain. (Today's History).

FROM THE MIDDLE of the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth, medical herbalism has been increasingly subject to legislative restriction. This is not because plant medicine is ineffectual. Rather, the history of legislation reflects the degree and type of control which successive governments, and the professions they recognise and license, have seen fit to exercise over the bodies of British citizens.

Legal control has been particularly visible in the case of neurologically active plants such as cannabis, also known in England as hemp or marijuana. (The Spanish word ...

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