A History of Herbal Drugs

     The use of plants to treat symptoms of illness is found not only in mankind but also in many species that inhabit the planet. Chimpanzees have been observed to seek out specific plants to treat bowels problems. Even jaguars have been known to consume certain herbs after grooming to treat problems associated with hairballs.

Self-Medicating Chimpanzee?

     Plants have been used as a source of nourishment but some plants are poisonous or cause secondary effects such as diarrhea, increased perspiration, pain relief, even hallucinations (see post: Drugs Used in Religion-The New World; Drugs Used in Religion-The Old World). 

     In many societies, oral tradition has passed down the knowledge of these naturally occurring medicines and every culture in the world has developed a body of herbal knowledge as part of its tradition.
     Archaeological evidence (carbon dating) from ancient Babylon shows that plants were already being cultivated as medicines by human beings over 60,000 years ago.In India, China and Egypt, written records of medicinal herbs date back over 5000 years and at least 2,500 years in Greece and Asia Minor. Sumerian prescriptions for healing using herbal sources, such as caraway seeds, thyme, myrrh and opium have been found on clay tablets. 

Ebers Papyrus

     The Ancient Egyptians wrote the Ebers Papyrus which contains information on over 850 plant medicines such as garlic, mandrake, castor bean, aloe and even cannabis.

     Some of the earliest records from 1500 BC describe how Ancient Egyptians used garlic (Allium sativum), juniper (Juniperus communis) and myrrh (Commiphora molmol) for medicinal purposes.

     By 1000 AD, on the British Isles, ‘The Leech Book of Bald’ listed herbs used to protect people from infections.
     By the twelfth century the Welsh Physicians of Myddfai took the more modern approach of basing their philosophy on good diet, a moderate lifestyle, and simple herbal remedies.

Leech Book of Bald

     Hippocrates (460-377 BC) the Greek physician known as the 'father of modern medicine', used only food and herbs as treatment for his patients. He is best known for the sayings: 'Let your food be your medicine and let medicine be your food'. 

     The earliest known Greek herbal lists were compiled by Diocles of Carystus, written during the 3rd century B.C, and another by Krateuas from the 1st century B.C. 

     Between 50 and 68 AD The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides wrote a compendium of more than 600 plants, 35 animal products, and ninety minerals, known as De Materia Medica which remained the authoritative reference of herbalism into the 17th century. Another compendium of herbal sources was written by Theophrastus and called the Historia Plantarum, in the 4th century BC.
     

De Materia Medica

     It was not long before the knowledge and the use of plants as medicines came to be seen as being the property of certain exclusive groups. The early church played a major role in the use of medicinal herbs through its policy that healing could only be accomplished by God or his ministers, perhaps a first step to institute the idea of the priest as the healer (see post: The Physician, the Priest and the Politician). In the beginning, only monks were allowed to grow or use herbs for healing and also translated Arabic records on herbalism. Other herbalists were often accused as being witches and burned at the stake.
     In China, the emperor Chi'en Nung compiled a book of medicinal plants called Pen Tsao which included 300 herbs including ephedra (ma huang), a drug which is still used today. The mythological Chinese emperor Shennong is said to have written the first Chinese pharmacopoeia, the 'Shennong Ben Cao Jing'. The 'Shennong Ben Cao Jing' lists 365 medicinal plants and their uses - including ephedra, hemp, and chaulmoogra (one of the first treatments for leprosy). 

Shennong

     Ayurvedic medicine, still practiced today in India dates back to the 2nd century BC. Even as early as 800 BC, an Indian writer listed 500 medicinal plants, indiginous to the Indian subcontinent. Turmeric was noted as a medicinal herb as earIy as 1900 BC. The Sushruta Samhita from the 6th century BC describes 700 medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 preparations based on animal sources.
     The use of herbs as medicines has been (and still is today) a sought-after cure for illness. From the Peruvian rainforest, came the drug Cat's Claw Herb (unicara tomentosa) used by some today to stimulate the immune system; from Africa, the herb pygeum (prunus africana), shown to be beneficial for prostate disease; from Australia: tea tree oil (malaleuca tree) used as an antiseptic by soldiers during the Second World War; from the South Pacific, noni (morinda citrifolia) also thought to be a stimulant of the immune system.
     Herbal medicine ('herbalism') is not only the study and use of medicinal properties of plants but sometimes includes fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and various animal parts.
     Plants have the ability to synthesize a wide variety of chemical compounds, used to perform biological functions, as well as to defend against attack from predators such as insects, fungi and herbivorous mammals. More than 12,000 such compounds have been isolated so far; a number estimated to be less than 10% of the total.

Ayurvedic medicine

     This use of plants as medicines predates written human history and ethnobotany (the study of traditional human uses of plants) is recognized as an effective way to discover future medicines. Researchers have identified more than 120 compounds used in modern medicine which were derived from plant sources. Examples include quinine, opium, aspirin and the heart medication, digitalis.          

     Many of the herbs and spices used by humans to season food also yield useful medicinal compounds. It is likely that the use of herbs and spices in cuisine developed in part as a response to the threat of food-borne pathogens. Studies show that in tropical climates where pathogens are the most abundant, recipes are the most highly spiced and the spices with the most potent antimicrobial activity tend to be selected.     

     In all cultures vegetables are spiced less than meat, presumably because they are more resistant to spoilage. Even many of the common weeds that tend to grow around human settlements, such as nettle, dandelion and chickweed also contain medicinal properties.
     In many non-industrialized societies the use of herbs to treat illness is often more affordable than purchasing expensive modern pharmaceuticals. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care.
     During the Middle Ages in Europe, Benedictine monasteries were the primary source of medical knowledge. Many Greek and Roman writings on medicine, as on other subjects, were preserved by hand copying of manuscripts in monasteries and monasteries tended to become local centers of medical knowledge with their herb gardens providing the raw materials for simple treatment of common disorders.
     Folk medicine in the smaller centers supported wandering herbalists, the 'wise-women' and 'wise men', who prescribed herbal remedies usually accompanied by spells, enchantments, divination and advice.
     In the later Middle Ages, women and men who were knowledgeable in herb lore became the targets of the witch hysteria. In the beginning, medicine in Europe was primarily a women’s art. with the classic image of witches boiling herbs in a cauldron originating from this period. In about the 13th century, graduates of male-only medical schools and members of barber-surgeon guilds began to displace the traditional female village herbalists. 

Early Herbalists?

     One of the most well-known female herbalists of this time period was Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century Benedictine nun who wrote a medical text called Causae et Curae.

     Other notable women who helped establish the worth of herbal medicine included Trotula, chairwoman of the Salerno medical school; Maud Grieve, who promoted herbal health during the first world war and Hilda Leyel, who founded the Herb Society in 1927, even treating patients while on her death bed.

     During the Middle Ages in Britain, many people subscribed to the 'Doctrine of Signatures', a theory which suggested that herbs had been ‘signed’ by God and that their appearance and characteristics revealed clues to their medicinal uses. Milk thistle (Carduus marianus) was believed to help promote milk flow for nursing mothers because of the milky looking white stains on its leaves. The yellow flowers of the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) were believed to be good for jaundice because of their yellow colour – thought to echo the colour of bile.

Hildegard of Bingen

     With the advent of the printing press, herbalists could spread the word about effective herbal medicines and in the sixteen hundreds Nicholas Culpeper suffered the wrath of mainstream physicians and apothecaries because he encouraged ordinary people to use simple local herbs rather than buy exotic imported remedies to cure their ills. Culpeper also translated several of the main medical textbooks of the time, which were herbal remedies and treatments, from Latin into English, making medical treatments available to the ordinary people and reducing income for those physicians and apothecaries.

Doctrine of Signatures

     In the medieval Islamic world, medical schools known as Bimaristan appeared in the 9th century. The Arabs recognized Greco-Roman culture and learning, and translated tens of thousands of texts into Arabic for further study. The Arab trading culture had access to plant material from distant places such as China and India and herbals, medical texts and translations of the classics of antiquity were brought in from both the east and the west. Muslim botanists physicians contributed greatly to earlier knowledge. 

     Al-Dinawari described more than 637 plant drugs in the 9th century and Ibn al-Baitar described more than 1,400 different plants, foods and drugs, over 300 of which were his own original discoveries, in the 13th century.
     The experimental scientific method was introduced in the 13th century by the Andalusian-Arab botanist Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, the teacher of Ibn al-Baitar. Al-Nabati introduced empirical techniques in the testing, description and identification of numerous materia medica, and he separated unverified reports from those supported by actual tests and observations, allowing the study of materia medica to evolve into the science of pharmacology.

Ibn al-Baitar

     Baghdad became an important center for Arab herbalism, as was Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) between 800 and 1400. Abulcasis (936-1013) of Cordoba authored 'The Book of Simples', an important source for later European herbals, while Ibn al-Baitar (1197–1248) of Malaga authored the 'Corpus of Simples', the most complete Arab herbal which introduced 200 new healing herbs, including tamarind, Aconitum, and nux vomica.
     'The Canon of Medicine' (1025), written by Avicenna lists 800 tested drugs, plants and minerals, outlining the healing properties of nutmeg, senna, sandalwood, rhubarb, myrrh, cinamon and rosewater. This Canon of Medicine remained a medical authority, used at many European and Arab medical schools, until the early 19th century.
Other pharmacopoeia books include that written by Abu-Rayhan Biruni in the 11th century and Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) in the 12th century, Peter of Spain's 'Commentary on Isaac', and John of St Amand's 'Commentary on the Antedotary of Nicholas'. 

Avicenna

     In the 19th century, when chemistry had advanced far enough to allow extraction of active ingredients from herbs, the old French word for herb, 'drogue', became the name for chemical 'drugs'. These chemical extracts eventually displaced herbs as the standard of care. There were several forces leading to the predominance of chemicals over herbs, but one of the most important remains a major issue today: the problem of reproducibility.

     There is little doubt that herbs can be effective treatments, if for no other reason than even through the 1970s, most drugs used in medicine came from herbs. Many of today’s medicinal herbs have been studied in meaningful double-blind, placebo-controlled trials that provide a rational basis for believing them effective. Some of the best substantiated include ginkgo for Alzheimer’s disease, St. John’s wort for mild to moderate depression, and saw palmetto for benign prostatic hypertrophy.

     * Herbal Medicine: subject of research for the novel The Judas Kiss - Amazon Kindle.

Mother Nature's Psychedelic Roadside Drug Store

     Hallucinogens are drugs, some naturally occurring , others synthetically created in the laboratory, products that can be classified into three categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, deliriants. These are all psychoactive compounds, able to cause subjective changes in perception, emotion, consciousness and thought.

Morning Glory Flower

     Many drugs contain similar components which are the main active ingredient, provoking the altered state (see post: Altered States of Consciousness). Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), for instance, is the principle 'psychedelic' contained in ayahuasca; mescaline is the main ingredient in Peyote and San Pedro Cactus (see post: Drugs Used in Religion-The New World). But even outside of 'exotic' regions of the world, there are plants which can be used for 'mind-altering' effects, plants that, literally, grow at the side of the road.

Morning Glory Seeds

     The Morning Glory is a beautiful and common plant found in many gardens throughout North America. The seed of many species of this plant contain ergot alkyoids, a chemical whose structural skeleton is similar to that of the synthetic psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Derivatives of ergot alkyloids are used medically in the treatment of migraine headaches as well as Parkinson's Disease (see post: The Genetics of Drug Addiction).

Fly Agaric Mushrooms

     Mushrooms have been a popular source of psychedelic drugs for thousands of years. Psilocybin mushrooms have been used both in the 'New' and in the 'Old' worlds. Muscimol, found in the mushroom amanita muscara or 'Fly Muscaric' (see post: The 'High' Priest) has been in use in Northern Europe and Asia for centuries.

     The same ergot alkyloids which are found in Morning Glory seeds are also found in several different types of fungi (mushrooms) that commonly infect grains such as rye. 'Ergotism' caused by the ingestion of these ergot alkyoids can produce psychedelic 'trips' (hallucinations), nausea, unconsciousness, seizures, peripheral blood supply compromise and gangrene as well as provoke abortions.

St. Anthony`s Cross (Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony)

     'Saint Anthony's Fire' was the name given to these symptoms of ergotism, a tribute to the Viennese monks, The Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony (founded 1095), who specialised in the treatment of this problem. This same ergot compound may have been the psychoactive ingredient used by participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries (see post: Drugs Used in Religion-The Old World).

     'Datura Stramonium' is a weed that belongs to the 'nightshade' family and is more commonly known as 'Jimson weed', 'stink weed' and 'devil's trumpet'. The active compounds in datura are 'tropane alkyloids' such as atropine, scopolamine and hyoscymine. This weed has been used in religious rituals in Asia as well as Native North America since ancient times. The effects of the plant include confusion, inability to discern between reality and fantasy, rapid heart rate, increased body temperature, light sensitivity and amnesia. Tropane alkyloids are also the active ingredients in Mandrake root, henbane and deadly nightshade.

Datura Stramonium (Nightshade)

   'Salvia Divinorum' (Diviner's Sage, Seer's Sage) is a psychoactive plant which can induce dissociative effects (much like the anesthetic ketamine) and is a potent producer of "visions" and other hallucinatory experiences. Salvinorin A is the active compound in this herb. Smoked, chewed or swallowed, this 'diterpene' hallucinogen can result in 'overlapping' realities, visions of 'membranes' wrapping the surroundings, re-experiencing of past memories, uncontrollable laughter, sensations of motion or 'merging' into surrounding objects.

Salvia Divinorum (Diviner`s Sage)

     'Nutmeg', the same 'spice commonly used in our foods and pastries, is a product of sub-tropical regions such as India. In low doses, the seed of the nutmeg (essential oil of nutmeg) produces no noticeable physiological or neurological response, but in large doses, raw nutmeg can cause convulsions, palpitations, dehydration, generalised body pain and delirium.

     Nutmeg contains myristicin (a phenylpropene) a compound which is also found in lesser quantities in parsley and dill). Myristicin is a mono-amine oxidase inhibitor, a substance that is a principle component of many older types  of anti-depressant medication.

Myristicin

     Then there is the 'Colorado River Toad' (also known as the Sonoran Desert Toad), native to Northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. This amphibian is most often found in streams, canals and drainage ditches (literally, at the roadside). The venom and skin secretions of these toads contain a variant of the tryptamine DMT (the same active compound as in ayahuasca) as well as bufotenine, a drug similar to the neurotransmitter, serotonin.

Nutmeg

     Ingestion of the saliva or skin secretions can produce hallucinations and the 'way-out' trips that the shaman of the Amazon experience when they ingest ayahuasca (see post: Drugs Used in Religion-The New World).

     There are many more naturally occurring products in Mother Nature's Psychedelic Roadside Drug Store and, when on a road trip to any unfamiliar territory,  it is always wise to check what 'new and delightful' leaf (or toad) might have found its way into your salad.

Colorado River Toad

     *Natural source medicines: subject of research for the novel The Judas Kiss- Amazon Kindle

Victoria's Secrets

     Queen Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 1819 – 1901) was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. The Victorian Era, the longest reign of any British monarch and of any female monarch in history, brought in expansion of the British Empire, rapid industrialization, increased fertility rates and decreased mortality in old and young. But not all was well in this new period of history.

Queen Victoria

     The use of alcohol was rampant throughout British (and American) society, an ill that was recognized and addressed by 'temperance societies'. But narcotic use, in the form of opium, morphine or morphine mixed with alcohol (laudanum) was looked upon by many as benign and, for some, even as a necessity. Narcotic addiction was rarely discussed outside of medical circles. It was a problem, a secret that society tried to ignore.

     As a group, in Victorian times women were frequently provided with opiates to address a range of maladies, female complaints' ranging from nervousness to syphilis to menstrual cramps. It was not uncommon even for pregnant women to use opiates to calm the nerves resulting in the birth of opiate-addicted babies. Dr. Fordyce Barker, founding president of the American Gynecological Society (1876) was the first to import the hypodermic syringe into the USA (see post: A History of Heroin).

Part of the Temperance Movement

       

     Hypodermic medication (morphine) became instrumental in male regulation of female 'maladies' resulting in what became known as a female 'characteristic' of the time, 'hypodermic addiction'. Sir Thomas Clouston (1840-1915) was the Physician Superintendant of Royal Edinburgh Asylum and was a celebrated lecturer with an international reputation for his exposition of the psychiatric disorders of adolescence. He published extensively, with tomes such as 'Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases' (1883), 'Unsoundness of Mind' (1911) and 'Morals and The Brain'.

The 'Men's Club'

   
     Clouston was a firm believer in 'masturbational insanity' and an uncompromising advocate of teetotalism. Clouston was an addiction specialist as well with a particular prejudice against women. He believed that the 'exhausting calls of menstruation, maternity, and lactation from the nervous reflux influences of ovulation, conception and parturition are ruinous if there is the slightest predisposition to derangement'. These anxieties concerning women's bodily functions was the principle reason Clouston advocated 'morphine to subdue and regulate'.

     The 'opiate eaters' in Victorian society were more often white and middle to upper class (see post: The Opium Eaters). Many were the wives of physicians or nurses with access to drugs. As early as 1782, it was common practice for women of Nantucket Island to take 'a dose of opium every morning'. English novelist, Wilkie Collins recognized that, in Victorian society, women were 'yoked under the established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and ends at home', Many woman, chafing at the boredom and frustration, used morphine to drug themselves into functional passivity.

Wilkie Collins

     But opiate addiction was not limited to the wealthy. Opiates used as medicines and as recreational escapes crossed all socioeconomic classes. Women who worked in factories and farms used opiates to numb away boredom and pain. Drug use among prostitutes was noted to be particularly concerning. Prostitution became both a gateway into drug use and a means to an end for women who fed their habits by earning money any way that they could.

     By the end of the 19th century, women accounted for 50-70% of opiate addicts. Over prescription by physicians, the belief that women were more fragile than men and therefore incapable of coping with pain, and the availability of opiate containing patent medications contributed to the prevalence of opiate addiction in Victorian women. Overdose, death and addiction were overlooked due to the lack of regulation.

     A 'nervous condition' accounted for many of the common complaints, especially of women, throughout the Era and most patent medicines, no matter what their particular benefit, always claimed to cure any nervous trouble associated with the malady.

Posters for Temperance

     Many products contained no harmful substances while others were primarily narcotic-based. More often than not, the markings on the bottle did not note the contents or active ingredients. But whether the origin was physiological or psychological, Dr. Hammond's Nerve and Brain Pills were 'guaranteed' to cure what ailed you.  But first you had to know the symptoms of 'nervous troubles', which were generic enough to include almost anyone:  'This will cure you if you feel generally miserable, or suffer with a thousand and one bad feelings, both physical and mental, among them low spirits, nervousness, weariness, lifelessness, dizziness, feeling of fullness, like bloating after meals, or a sense of 'goneness' or emptiness of stomach in morning, flesh soft and lacking firmness; headache, blurring specks floating before the eyes...'.

     Whether morphine was the cause or the cure, even large firms like Sears Roebuck had just the thing to cure you one for alcoholism, another for narcotic addiction. Shown underneath the ad for the German Liquor Cure, is a potent bottle of Cure for the Opium and Morphia Habit.  At just 67 cents a bottle, it's calming effect would forever kill any cravings for other narcotics. This was 'the only one' you needed.

     But of particular concern was the administration of opiates, both prescription and over-the-counter, in children.

     The selling of narcotic concoctions and the treatment for opium addiction were becoming big business in the later 1800s. The Pulaski Citizen newspaper of Nashville, Tennessee (1875), ran advertisements by doctors listing concoctions to help calm unruly children. One of the leading causes of infant and child mortality during the 19th century was the practice of attempting to quiet children by giving them narcotics, such as opium and morphine, at times mixed with alcohol (laudanum). These 'remedies' were certainly effective in calming the agitated child.

      In the 19th century, the Pulaski Citizen carried lengthy advertisements for dozens of inexpensive opium based concoctions under a variety of names. These included: 'Godfrey's Cordial', 'Mother's Helper', 'Infant's Quietness', 'Atkinson's Preservative' and 'Soothing Syrup'.

     These tonics may have contained various ingredients but most popular of the time was 'Godfrey's Cordial' which contained high levels of laudanum. It was inexpensive, and it was completely unregulated. An aspect of this problem that went unrecognized for years was associated with the fact that opium is fat-soluble and does not dissolve easily in water and because of this will tend to settle at the bottom of the bottle. This last dose, quite often was exactly that. The 'dregs' at the bottom of the container had the potential to be fatal, especially to a small child. In addition, the 'recommended' dose was usually stated 'as needed', 'at the discretion of the parent' which allowed the parents to drug their children as often as they liked.

     For women, different versions of this same product were advertised: 'Ayer's Sarsaparilla Cures', 'Prof. Low's Liniment and Worm Syrup' and 'Wine of Carday', all aimed at the 'exhausting calls of being a woman'.

     Physicians in the Victorian era ( and even today) were known to treat their own headaches, insomnia, and anxieties with narcotics (see post: The High Doctor). Dr. Jekyll in the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is an example of a physician who takes a 'potion' that changes his persona.

     In the 1870s, the majority of male addicts in the US were physicians, estimates being between 10 and 20 percent of the entire physician workforce being morphine addicts.

The London Stock Exchange

     In Britain, Dr. James Crombie (1848-1873) believing that the 'delicacy of the syringe' hindered the use of morphine, developed a cheap method of subcutaneous injection by coating a silk thread with morphine which he then drew under the skin, led by a needle. Crombie himself died of a narcotic overdose following surgery on his own wrist.

     The stock exchange in Victorian times and today is known as a workplace of high tension and angst. In 1871, it was reported that Wall Street brokers countered 'one sort of excitement', the gold fever, with another, a 'stimulating opiate'.

     A 25 year old New York lady who visited the exchange on a regular basis was found to be taking morphine several times a day using a syringe to take the drug rectally.

Union Soldiers in the American Civil War

     Narcotic addiction was also regarded as the 'army disease', recognition of the soldiers' exposure, appropriately (and, at times, inappropriately), to treatment with morphine. The emotional damage caused by battle (in the 20th century called 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder') was recognized in the 19th century.

     In the American Civil War, there were over four million troops involved with huge dead, dying and injured on both sides. Opium poppies were grown both in the north and in the south, with the opium doled out often indiscriminately.

     The number of addicted civil war survivors is impossible to estimate but by 1900 (nearly 40 years after the end of the war), when the last of the Civil War veterans were dying out, the per capita use of opium and morphine fell dramatically.

     Narcotic addiction of veterans was also seen among British forces following the Crimean War (1853-1856) as well as among Prussian militia in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

   
     The Victorian Era was a period of great advances in industry, in war, in medicine and in society. But not everything went well and not everything is well remembered. Some things have been kept as 'secret'.

   
     * The history of narcotics use: subject of research for the novel Whip the Dogs - Amazon Kindle

The Reverend Jim Jones

     James Warren Jones is remembered for one thing and one thing only - the deaths by suicide of 913 men, woman and children through the ingestion of cyanide-laced soft drink, in the compound of Jonestown, Guyana November 18, 1978. The story of Jim Jones is the story of the demagogue who tried to attain power and influence riding 'on the coat-tails of God'.

Jonestown

     It would probably be misleading to say that all of these 'false messiahs' had strange upbringings and troubled childhoods but this theme certainly can be applied to the founder and leader of the 'People's Temple'.
     As a child, Jones was obsessed with religion and death (usually a bad sign, as far as I can tell). He was bright and well-read, studying the works of Stalin, Marx, Mao Zedong, Ghandi and Hitler (this reading list was probably another bad sign). At the age of 27, Jones became a member of the Communist party and spoke out against American and UN intervention following the invasion of the south by forces of  the northern regime on the Korean Peninsula.

Jones and his 'The Peoples' Temple Christian Church Full Gospel'

     He drew 'inspiration' from a faith-healing service in a Baptist Church and realized that there was money to be made and power to be gained leading gullible flocks astray. Within a few years, Jones was the leader of his own church with the somewhat cumbersome name of  'The Peoples' Temple Christian Church Full Gospel', more affectionately known simply as the 'People's Temple'. Multiple sites were opened and membership blossomed but, like so many other 'religious' leaders, Jim Jones was obsessed with the end of the world (see post: Doomsday in Modern Culture).
     He predicted a nuclear holocaust for July 15, 1967 and moved his main base to Northern California. As time passed, the media and politicians began to question Jones' methods and membership in the 'People's Temple' started to weaken. It was time for Jones and those who still followed him to seek sanctuary from the interference of the American government and the probing eyes of the media. Jones started his project in Guyana in the early 1970s and, moved there with his followers in 1977 amid the pressure of alleged sexual, physical and emotional abuse by disaffected former members.

   

Jerry Brown

     By that time, drug abuse by the leader had also been alleged and Jones' religious devotion was also in question (a factor which, if proven to be correct, would have disallowed any tax-free status his institution had been enjoying in America).
     Members stated that Jones 'used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion' (shades of Karl Marx? - see post: The Demagogues Who Usurp Religious Belief) and that once, in a fit of rage, Jones slammed the Bible onto a tabletop and declared, "I have to destroy this paper idol." Jim Jones had turned into a devout communist and atheist rather than a religious zealot. During his 'learning years' in California, Jim Jones made political connections with politicians such as Jerry Brown (governor of California), Harvey Milk (gay activist and popular San Francisco City politician), Walter Mondale (vice-presidential candidate) and the wife of president Jimmy Carter. Despite being far away in South America, Jones' cult still affected the American psyche with most of his followers in Guyana having close relatives back home on the US mainland.

   

Congressman Leo Ryan

     With pressure mounting on the federal government, Congressman Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to Jonestown with the goal of investigating alleged abuses. The congressman was killed (along with four other)s as he was boarding a plane to leave by members of  Jones' armed guards called the 'Red Brigade' (reading too much communist literature?).

     Later that day, anticipating that the 'gig was over', Jim Jones led his nearly 1000 followers to their deaths. Jones had once mentioned that, with death, souls are taken away by  UFO to a higher realm (see post: Stranger than Fiction).

     Was this man's story a tale of drug abuse (barbiturates and LSD were found in Jones' body at autopsy) and mental illness compounded by the isolation in South America, harassment by government and media officials and his fear of the 'End of the World'?

     Or was this man simply  the 'darkness trying to shut out the light' (see post: The Good and the Evil ). Watch the PBS documentary below:

     Jim Jones Jonestown Nightmare in Paradise. - YouTube

      *Religious personality cults: subject of research for the novel  The Tao of the Thirteenth God - Amazon Kindle.

The Risk of Never Waking Up at All

     In 1996, the American Medical Association recognized sleep (and the lack of sleep, insomnia) as a medical speciality. But the history of sleeplessness has been with the human race for tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years. The earliest cavemen likely suffered from sleep disturbances, associated with the worries about what they would eat the next day, how to keep the carve warm or how to avoid the many predators that were wandering around.

Complications of Insomnia

     The word 'insomnia' was first used in 1623, in the third known English Language dictionary, written by Henry Cockeram. Cockeram defined insomnia as 'Insomnie (the 'anglicized' form of the Latin 'insomnia'): 'Watching, want of power to sleepe'.

     Insomnia (the absence of sleep) is intricately related to the night and the absence of light. Insomnia is considered by some to be a 'double negative' -  the absence of unconsciousness (a lack of sleep when there is lack of light).

     The descriptive history of insomnia dates far back. The Babylonian Atrahasis epic (about 2000 B.C.), describes a war among the gods at the end of which the lead troublemaker is killed and his remains used to create human beings.

Epic of Gilgamesh

     But these humans, set to work at manual labour, reproduce so rapidly that their noise keeps the god Enil from sleeping. In the real world, ancient peoples were kept from sleep by wars, moonlight, love and lust, anxiety, hunger noise...making insomnia a real and probably daily problem.

     In Greece, around 400 B.C, the father of western medicine, Hippocrates wrote his theory of sleep in 'Corpus Hippocraticum'.

     The oldest known literary work (The Epic of Gilgamesh) tells the story of the oldest human hero, the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh becomes mortal by making a transition from constant wakefulness to sleeplessness to knowledge, on the way, experiencing significant insomnia due to all the energy he possessed for work and celebration.

King Wu

     As in other ancient tales, sleeplessness and sleep play on the fault line between mortality and immortality. The 'devil' was to blame for the inability to fall asleep, a punishment from the gods. Others in the ancient world knew sleeplessness because of hunger, worry, and love sickness or—in the case of the Chinese King Wu—because he could not sleep as long as he had not secured heaven’s support'.

     Inhabitants of medieval Europe did not seem to have been worried when they woke up in the middle of the night - a worry that concerns insomniacs today. At that time, interrupted nocturnal sleep was a common experience, the culprits behind insomnia included bedbugs and fear of arson, robbery, and political conspiracy.

     But most worrisome of all were the Devil and his minions (see post: Devils and Demons): According to some, the Devil himself was an insomniac, a fact which required vigilance on the part of Christians.

     In the 1300s, public clocks and bells triggered a heightened awareness of insomnia (or, perhaps became a major cause of it). In Shakespeare’s plays, insomnia was often a condition that affected 'the unsettled mind'.

     With the emergence of the mercantile economy in modern Europe, new forms and ideas of insomnia began to predominate. Wasting one’s time became a serious sin and time was increasingly counted and calculated. New notions about sleep and the stresses of life arose: sleeplessness was secondary to anxiety and that anxiety came from putting faith in material things. Dutch Calvinists demanded moderation in both sleep and consumption. English preachers of the seventeenth century moulded the concept of sleep into the equivalent of 'moral disorder'. Sleeping in was a bad thing and morally condemned.

     In the 19th century, there were many schools of thought for the cause of sleep (and the lack of it). One  idea was that sleep was related to the blood vessels, that sleep was due either to congestion or pressure of blood in the brain, or a lack of blood in the brain.
     Two chemical approaches were also thought to be possible concepts for the cause of sleep. The chemical approach implied that sleep was caused by either a lack of oxygen to the brain or an accumulation of toxic substances, such as cholesterol, carbon dioxide, 'urotoxins' or 'leucomaines'.  With the build-up of these toxins during the day, sleep eventually ensued. As one slept, these same toxins slowly drained away.
     With a new understanding of the central nervous system, the demonstration of the electrical activity of the nervous system, and the newly named neuron (the nerve cell), neural theories for the cause of sleep came into vogue. One type of neural theory was that neurons were paralyzed during sleep, preventing communication between other nerve cells.

     Based on earlier experiments, behavioral theories for the cause of sleep were presented in the late 1800s, theories which proposed the existence of an 'inhibitory reflex' as the cause of sleep; sleep occurred as the result of something being turned off or removed. This inhibitory theory was expanded to state that a loss of wakefulness was based on a loss of stimulation to the senses. By the end of the century, this theory was refuted with the finding of the role of the brainstem in sleep and wakefulness.

     An experiment performed by two neuro-anatomists in the early 1800s, revealed the anatomy of sleep and wakefulness to some degree. In 1809,

Anatomy Museum of Luigi Rolando (Turin)

     Luigi Rolando noted that a permanent state of sleepiness occurred after he removed the cerebral hemispheres in the brains of birds. Marie Jan Pierre Flourens repeated the same experiment in pigeons in 1822.

     Human beings always attempt to'correct' what they deem to be an abnormal state. With lack of sleep (insomnia) judged as an abnormal state, sleeping remedies were invented.

     Evidence of the earliest forms of sleeping remedies are found in ancient Greece and Egypt.

     The most common form of sleep aid used in the ancient world was opium, a very effective antidote to sleeplessness. The Greek God of sleep, Hypnos, was usually shown holding a poppy flower in paintings and sculpture.

Hypnos

     Other sleeping aids of the ancient world included lettuce juice, the bark of mandrake (mandragora), the seeds of a herb called henbane, and, of course wine. The juice of lettuce was also used to induce sleep. As early as 300 B.C. , Greek doctors were known to prescribe concoctions of all these different plant derivatives. Similar prescriptions were also apparently known throughout the Arab world.

     Plant-based sleep aids were all that were available up until the nineteenth century. Apothecaries of the Middle Ages in Europe stocked 'spongia somnifera' a sponge soaked in wine and various herbs. Other mixtures were known in England in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as 'drowsy syrups'.

Mandrake (Mandragora)

     In 1805, the chemist, Fredrick Setumer synthesized opium for the first time (see post: Ancient remedies), followed by new research into synthesized sedatives to be used as sleeping remedies. By the 1850s two new sleep aids had emerged as the most successful and were being commonly used around the world.

     Chloral hydrate, developed in the early 1830s in Germany (by Justus von Liebig who used dry chlorine on ethylic alcohol, creating chloroform) was a very fast acting depressant of the central nervous system and  extremely effective for inducing sleep quickly (especially when mixed with alcohol).
     Chloral hydrate became known as 'knock out drops', 'Mickey Finn' or 'Mickeys' whence the saying 'slip a Mickey into his drink'. The new drug was introduced in Berlin as a surgical anesthetic and began to be used for insomnia, in lieu of opiates. The problem was that in many cases people overdosed, especially if any amount of alcohol was consumed, and never woke up after using these 'sleep aids'.

Justus von Liebig

     The other extremely popular sleep aid of the nineteenth century was pills made of a combination of bromides  - sodium bromide, potassium bromide, and ammonium bromide, which all act as central nervous system depressants -  invented in 1857 by an English chemist, Sir Charles Locock. These were originally designed as a (rather ineffective) treatment for epilepsy.

     In 1864, however, a German doctor, Otto Behrend, discovered that potassium bromide was a useful sedative. From that point on, the various bromides be-came popular as sleep aids in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Although bromides could make someone fall asleep very easily, these drugs came with a variety of side effects and like chloral hydrate, could also cause overdose.

     In the early twentieth century, the most popular sleeping pills were the barbiturates. The barbiturates comprise a class of drugs with more than 25,000 known compounds.

Adolf von Baeyer

     A Prussian chemist, Adolf von Baeyer, is credited with discovering barbituric acid in 1864, creating the acid out of a compound of malonic acid and urea. In 1903, a student of Baeyer's produced a new compound out of barbituric acid and a diethyl derivative and gave the new chemical (diethyl-malonyl) the commercial name Veronal.

     The most widely used was phenobarbital. Other pharmaceutical companies created new barbiturates in the 1920s and 1930s - Eli Lilly produced Amytal and Seconal; Abbott Laboratories invented Pentothal.

     As with chloral hydrate and the bromides, the barbiturates were effective sleep aids but also dangerous. Barbiturates were shown to be addictive, could have a variety of unpleasant side-effects and, when taken with alcohol, were often lethal either through accidental overdose or planned suicide.

     The benzodiazepines were developed as safer sleeping pills in the 1970s (Valium, Xanax, Ativan) but these chemicals still shared some of the problems seen with barbiturates (addiction and memory impairment).

     In 1978, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved one active ingredient for an over-the-counter sleep aid - the antihistamine doxylamine succinate and, in 1982 approved two more antihistamines for non-prescription hypnotics (diphenhydramine HCL and diphenhydramine citrate).

St. John's Wort Flower

     Today's 'natural' sleeping remedies are more advanced than opium and lettuce juice used in ancient times. Most modern natural sleep aids use combinations from a variety of herbs and herbal extracts from all over the world. These herbal extracts include St. Johns Wort and nardostchya jatamanshi and valeriana wallichi which are mild sedatives.

     Aside from Gilgamesh and the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, many famous people in more recent times have suffered from sleep disturbances. Insomnia is not a modern problem. Insomnia is a fact of life and always has been.

Sir Isaac Newton

     Sir Isaac Newton (see post: Doomsday in Modern Culture) suffered from a severe case of depression and, consequently, had trouble sleeping.

     Some famous insomniacs felt that their nocturnal wakefulness was connected with the beds in which they were sleeping.

     Benjamin Franklin insisted on having bed-sheets that had low temperature as this would help him sleep.
     Sir Winston Churchill had two beds and if he couldn’t sleep in one, he would lie down in the second.

Thomas Edison

     Thomas Edison was unable to have a normal night sleep pattern so he started catnapping during the day.
     Charles Dickens believed that the position he had in bed and the position of the bed itself were factors in getting a good sleep and he placed his bed facing north and slept exactly in the middle of the mattress. He used to check this by extending both his arms out sideways and then wriggling until he was exactly in the centre. Only after this ritual could he begin to enjoy his slumber.

     Marcel Proust used Barbital to trick his insomnia.
     Napoleon was unable to sleep more than three hours every night but it seemed that this was enough for him.
     One of the most creative insomniacs was Alexandre Dumas who produced enough words to fill 1,200 volumes and claimed to have fathered 500 children.

Alexandre Dumas

     The English writer, Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, consumed huge amounts of bromides to the point that he suffered hallucinations but still could not get the sleep he wanted.

     The Earl of Rosebery, the Prime Minister of England for one year, between 1894 and 1895 was forced to resign due to chronic insomnia. He had become a chronic user of Sulphonal.

     Margaret Thatcher stated that 'sleep is for wimps'.

     Richard Nixon, American president from 1969 to 1974 was a known chronic insomniac, often binge drinking when under stress. In 1968, Nixon was given an anti-convulsant medication (Dilantin) by his financier friend Jack Dreyfus (who had used the drug to treat his depression).

Margaret Thatcher

     The president then used the drug an on-going basis, resulting in slurred speech, dizziness, at times mental confusion and, increased insomnia during his final months in office before his resignation.

     Human beings always strive to correct 'abnormal' states and with the invention of 'sleeping  pills' as a 'correction', complications ensued.

     A white, crystalline powder called Sulphonal (dimethyl sulphone dimethyl methane) was developed in Germany in 1886 and marketed as a 'sleeping draught'. Within a short time, it became evident that use of Sulphonal on a regular basis resulted in hallucinations and addiction.

     Paraldehyde is a colourless liquid, soluble in water and highly soluble in alcohol. Paraldehyde slowly oxidizes in air, turning brown and producing an odour of acetic acid (vinegar). The drug was synthesized in 1829 and  introduced into clinical practice in the UK by an Italian physician in 1882. It has been used to treat epilepsy as well as a sedative and sleep medication. It is one of the safest hypnotics and was regularly given at bedtime in psychiatric hospitals and to the elderly up until the 1960s.

Richard Nixon

     Today, paraldehyde is sometimes used to treat unresponsive seizures (status epilepticus). Paraldehyde was the last injection given to Edith Alice Morrell in 1950 by the suspected serial killer Dr. John Bodkin Adams (see post: Death by Physician).

     An American survey of 107 physicians taken in 1880, reported 135 patients with 'chloral cravings'.

     The German writer, Karl Gutzkow became addicted to the drug and died in a fire from an over turned oil lamp while in a chloral stupor. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche used large doses of chloral for his sleep problems.

     The guilt ridden Dante Gabriel Rossetti (whose wife had overdosed on laudanum in 1862) avoided opiates but became hooked on chloral hydrate for his insomnia to the point he suffered paranoid delusions.

     A total of 376,000 kilograms of barbiturates were produced in the USA in 1946 (equivalent to 5 million people taking 1 sleeping pill each day for a full year). Patients taking barbiturates for longer than 4-6 weeks become depressed and anxious, develop tolerance and, if the drug is stopped are unable to sleep.

Paraldehyde

     Barbiturates have been used for murder as well as suicide. The death of an English widow in 1956 led to the arrest of her physician, Dr. John Bodkin Adams (see post: Death by Physician) who had a habit of prescribing large doses of heroin and other lethal drugs to elderly woman who had named him as beneficiary in their wills (see above).

     The American poet, Anne Sexton overdosed several times on Nembutal (a drug she dubbed her 'kill-me' pills) in the 1950s before finally carrying out a successful suicide by breathing in the exhaust from her car.

Virginia Woolf

     Author Virginia Woolf attempted suicide by overdosing on Veronal in 1913

     Marilyn Monroe took up to 20 Phenobarbital daily hoping she could get some sleep. On August 5, 1962, she was found dead in her hotel room. Her death was ruled to be 'acute barbiturate poisoning' by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office; a 'probable suicide' at age 36 although numerous conspiracy theories have been proposed, suggesting that her death was actually murder.

     Her internist had refilled Monroe's prescription for the barbiturate Nembutal a day earlier and the actress may very well have ingested enough Nembutal throughout the day such that it would lethally react with the chloral hydrate given to her later on.

     On June 22, 1969, Judy Garland was found dead in the bathroom of her rented house in London. Her blood contained the equivalent of 970 mg Seconal capsules. According to the coroner, the cause of death was an 'incautious self-overdosage of barbiturates' ('unintentional' suicide).

     Jimi Hendrix died of an overdose in London in 1970 (see post: Last Songs from the Opium Den), probably heroin but he had also taken 9 tablets of a sleeping medication called Vesparax, a combination tablet containing 50 mg brallobarbital, 150 mg secobarbital and 50 mg hydroxyzine (the antihistamine Atarax).

Jimi Hendrix

     The death of American rock star Michael Jackson in 2011 at 50 years of age, was one of the most high profile 'insomnia-related' deaths in recent history.

      Jackson  suffered from a long history of insomnia and had been under physician care for this problem for years. He died on June 25, 2009 of propofol intoxication after suffering a respiratory arrest at his home in Los Angeles.

     Propofol (marketed as Diprivan by pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca) is a short-acting, intravenously administered hypnotic agent, used for induction and maintenance of general anesthesia. Chemically, propofol is unrelated to barbiturates but has replaced the barbiturate Pentothal for anesthetic induction.

     Jackson had used a number of aliases (Omar Arnold and Jack London) to secure prescription drugs. He was said to have used propofol several times before his death, as well as alprazolam (a benzodiazepine), sertaline (an antidepressant), hydromorphone and hydrocodone (opioid pain killers) as well as a number of other prescription medications (omeprazole, paroxetine, carisopradol), all for insomnia. Jackson had been reported to be taking up to 40 alprazolam pills every night.

Michael Jackson

     Jackson's death was ruled a homicide. His personal physician, Conrad Murray, had administered propofol as well as two benzodiazepines (lorazepam and  midazolam) to his patient that same evening in Jackson's home.  Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison.

     The ancient Mesopotamians, Greeks and Egyptians had perhaps only one really powerful medication to treat insomnia, one which was powerful enough to kill (opium). Today, modern society has hundreds of these lethal drugs and, with this plethora of 'cures' for the ill of sleeplessness, comes the risk of never waking up at all.

 
     *Insomnia and sleep deprivation: subject of research for the novel The Judas Kiss - Amazon Kindle