"When pure and administered carefully it [cannabis] is one of the most valuable medicines we possess," wrote J.R. Reynolds, Queen Victoria's physician, in 1890 in an English medical journal, The Lancet.

In "Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine," author Dr. Lester Grinspoon, associate professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, remarks upon the "wonder drug of the 1940s:" penicillin.

"There were three major reasons for that reputation: it was remarkably nontoxic, even at high doses; it could be produced inexpensively on a large scale; and it was extremely versatile, acting against the microorganisms that cause a great variety of diseases, from pneumonia to syphilis."

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