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He predicted that London merchants might make a fortune selling it.

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In other words, the same novel sensory effects that made substances such as tobacco, opium and cannabis desirable to global consumers also made them fascinating for the earliest experimental scientists. But what did those drugs mean — for them, and for us? But in the 17th century, drugs acquired associations with the non-European world: Even the humble coffee bean from Yemen and Ethiopia and tea leaf from China were regarded as exotic medicines in this period.

Dr Cornelis Bontekoe, a physician in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, recommended in his Tractaat that up to two hundred cups of tea a day were ideal for good health. But for Christian Europe, the medicinal virtues of foreign drugs such as coffee, tea, opium and cinchona source of quinine were counterbalanced by their origins in the lands of heathens.

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Inquisitors in Mexico City portrayed indigenous users of peyote as sorcerers, and Jesuit priests deep in the Amazon jungle sent back anxious reports about a plant called ayahuasca that allowed shamans to gather knowledge from evil spirits. Psychoactive drugs thus stood at the centre of debates about imperialism, religion, and globalisation, as well as science. It would not be a stretch to say that the wave of stimulants, intoxicants and narcotics that followed in the wake of Christopher Columbus helped to create modernity as we know it.

From coffee, tea and chocolate to Adderall, painkillers and cocaine, and alternative remedies such as homeopathy and ginseng, consuming drugs stands at the centre of what it is to be a modern consumer. T he founding generation of scientists were, to put it mildly, not afraid of a little self-experimentation. Why not practise a form of experimental history and approach forgotten drugs in the manner of an Enlightenment scientist?

I was there to see cookbooks — exceptionally old ones. The cookbooks at Penn were a treasure trove. Most surprising, I found that recipes for medicinal drugs and foods were intermingled: Early modern drug merchants ventured into Amazonia to carry back samples of the precious cinchona bark. I decided to emulate Hooke and Newton and try to recreate and sample two of the recipes I found in the historical archives, to see if they actually had psychoactive properties.

Into the Light-Tomorrow's Medicine Today : William Campbell Douglass :

The first experiment was the easiest. I would buy cinchona, the Amazonian botanical that is used to treat malaria, and try to make what was perhaps the most controversial new drug of the 17th century: Early modern drug merchants ventured deep into Amazonia to carry back tiny samples of the precious cinchona bark.

Cinchona is actually more familiar than it sounds: Artisanal cocktail fans have recently generated new demand for the bark in their efforts to outdo Schweppes. But no one, to my knowledge, has been brewing up the 17th-century version of cinchona extract. But does it actually have a physiological effect? I can attest to both of these effects: It also gave me crazy dreams — of glowing undersea creatures made of jewels, for instance.

A bushelle of Poppys steeped in a gallon of brandy three or 4 dayse and put into it a quarter of a ounc of Clouvs and mace half a ounc of nutmigs, 3 quarterse of a ounce of sinimon.


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Bett all these steepe it, stirring it often then strain it out and sweeten it to yower pallet. Brett was clearly cooking for a large household, so I decided to use oneth of each ingredient, and I diluted the brandy with a substantial amount of water. The result was surprising: A noticeable glow of wellbeing set in around half an hour after drinking less than half the concoction, attributable to the traces of opiates in poppy seeds.

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But poppies also contain a number of other medicinal chemicals, including papaverine, used as an antispasmotic, and noscapine, which has been investigated as a cancer treatment. The result was a mild and pleasant but somewhat stimulating buzz. I wondered whether Brett and her family used poppy water purely as a medicine, or whether it had a recreational element as well. An book about Lincolnshire was more direct: At precisely the same period, Britain was building the largest empire the world had ever seen. And make no mistake, it was an empire built on the drug trade: Sugary tea, after all, was one of the main sources of calories for the typical Victorian factory worker, and sugar and rum were among the few recreations available to working folk in the era of Charles Dickens.

Yet in many ways, cures such as homeopathy are just as modern as Western pharmacy: At the dawn of modern science and medicine, it was not at all clear where the boundaries ought to be drawn: Anyone that says the treatments that Dr. Into the Light - Tomorrow's Medicine Today!: Tomorrow's Medicine Today From Amazon If you want a historical perspective on the H2O2 studies conducted during the past century, this is the book.

I should have saved my money. McCabe explains it so that the information is understandable and usefull. It sickens me that people like this offer false hope in order to turn a buck. Gee, this hasn't been done by mainstream medicine in over 50 years the author points out. Go figure, that's because it doesn't work.

Into the Light-Tomorrow's Medicine Today

Last time I checked, sitting in a tanning booth was more likely to cause cancer than cure it, and in a very pseudoscientific way, that's what the author's telling you to do. As usual, this "enlightened healer" is only trying to help people by pointing out things that those evil doctors don't want you to know, because by golly, light therapy isn't profitable for them. Also, for the record, you can get anybody to testify that "XYZ worked for me, it cured my herpes!

You run the same trial 20 times with 10 patients, you'll eventually get the results you want to see. Then you find a "journal" of bogus medicine to publish it, and voila. You can reference anything. Unfortunately, most people reading these books have an incomplete at best understanding of the science and statistics involved in these "trials" and to be fair, the drug company trials as well, but that's a rant for another day. This is commercialism, pure and simple, and if it makes you feel better, then by all means go play with lightbulbs, but if you think it's going to cure you of anything, then you're going to be profoundly disappointed.

Eye Opening From Amazon I was amazed at the level of detail. It's heavily documented, which is refreshing in an alternative medicine book. In fact, if what Dr. Douglass says is true and I'm pretty confident it is , then the mainstream medical establishment has a lot of explaining to do about why they have rejected and ignored light-based therapies that have produced excellent, well-documented clinical or double-blind results over the course of a century. He also does an excellent job in not overselling his claims. He pulls no punches about when and where the therapy failed to work.


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When it does work, he also doesn't hold back in his enthusiasm. Some might be put off by this last fact, but I think his presentation is well-balanced, overall. My only criticism is that, while most documentation is excellent, I wish the author had paid a bit more attention to completing all of his references. Unfortunately, there are no other descriptions of that book that I could find, such as who wrote or published it. I learned later that it was another book by the same author, but that fact should have been included in the reference. Another example of an inaccurate reference is on page , where he mentions a blue light therapy performed on a little girl in Chapter Unfortunately, Chapter 14 is about a doctor with AIDS and how he has dealt with this personal crisis.

It has no reference to either blue light therapy or the little girl. Such mistakes aside, the overall value of the book is tremendous.


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I recommend it heartily to anyone whose mind isn't closed like a steel trap. I also recommend another book by the author called Hydrogen Peroxide, Medical Miracle.

Tomorrow’s Medicine Today: Global Health Issues