Marijuana Medicine : A World Tour of the Healing and Visionary Powers of Cannabis

This ethnohistorical study, first published in Germany in 1992, traces the medicinal uses of the cannabis plant by many people in many eras. Nine US states have now moved to legalize marijuana in the treatment of ailments such as cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma, putting the states at odds with a federal government that continues to forbid its use. Though the war on drugs makes the topic politically hot, RStsch’s work is not a political treatise, but a cross-cultural survey that allows the facts (and the plant) to speak for themselves. He includes remedies and recipes in his profiles of the uses of cannabis across the globe. An anthropologist, RStsch is president of the German Society for Ethnomedicine. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)