High anxiety

English writers came late to cannabis by comparison with the French and Americans. Théophile Gautier published his Le Club des Hachichins in 1846 and Fitz Hugh Ludlow The Hasheesh Eater in 1857. By contrast the first English book on the subject was The Confessions of an English Hachich-Eater, published anonymously in 1884, and now thought to be the work of Sir William Laird Clowes (1856-1905), Times correspondent and author of a seven volume history of the British navy.

Sir William writes: “I dare say that English doctors are for the most part ready to confess that they know very little about this drug.” One of the reasons for …