Medical Cannabis Advocacy in South America During the 1910s

What the record actually shows

Cannabis arrived in South America through Portuguese colonial trade networks and, later, practices brought by enslaved and free Africans, which produced smoking traditions in Brazil known as maconha, diamba, or liamba ^[1][2]. By the 1910s, two distinct cannabis cultures coexisted: a European-derived medical use of Cannabis indica tinctures prescribed by physicians, and a popular smoking culture concentrated in northeastern Brazil and the Caribbean rim.

Crucially, there is no surviving evidence of an organized advocacy movement promoting medical cannabis in 1910s South America. No data Cannabis medicines were not celebrated or specially defended by medical societies, newspapers, or public figures. They were simply part of the routine pharmacopoeia—a standard remedy used alongside dozens of others, neither exceptional nor contested within the medical profession.

Cannabis in official and practical pharmacology

Throughout the 1910s, Brazilian and Argentine physicians and pharmacists relied on European pharmacopoeia standards—the British, French, and German formularies—all of which still listed cannabis as a legitimate medicine for pain, insomnia, and spasmodic conditions ^[3][4]. Prescriptions from hospital records of this era, when they survive, typically employ cannabis as a sedative or analgesic adjunct rather than as a first-line treatment, mirroring European medical practice.

The formalization of cannabis in the official Brazilian pharmacopoeia came later. The Pharmacopoeia Brasileira, whose first official edition appeared in 1929 under Rodolpho Albino Dias da Silva, codified preparations that had been in routine clinical use for decades ^[3]. This standardization occurred after the 1910s and reflected established practice rather than a new advocacy movement.

Brazil: medical use shadowed by racialized criminalization discourse

While physicians quietly prescribed cannabis tinctures for medical purposes, Brazilian elites in the 1910s became increasingly alarmed about maconha smoking among Afro-Brazilian, indigenous, and poor urban populations, particularly in northeastern states like Pernambuco, Maranhão, and Bahia ^[1][2].

Physician Rodrigues Doria's 1915 paper Os fumadores de maconha: efeitos e males do vício ("Maconha Smokers: Effects and Evils of the Vice"), presented at the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress in Washington, is one of the clearest primary documents of this era ^[5]. Doria explicitly framed maconha smoking as a public health menace tied to African heritage and cultural practices—a pathologizing framework that would profoundly influence later prohibition efforts rather than medical advocacy ^[5].

Thus the dominant Brazilian medical and public discourse around cannabis in the 1910s was not defense or promotion of therapeutic use, but criminalization and racialized stigma. Strong evidence The few physicians who discussed therapeutic applications did so only within general pharmaceutical texts, never through dedicated advocacy campaigns or professional societies.

Argentina, Uruguay, and the Andean region

In Argentina and Uruguay, cannabis appears in archival records of the 1910s primarily as a pharmacy item imported from European pharmaceutical houses such as Merck and Parke-Davis. No documented Spanish-language medical advocacy literature from this decade comparable to contemporaneous anti-cocaine or anti-alcohol campaigns has been identified. No data

In the Andean countries—Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia—the dominant medicinal plant debates of the 1910s focused on coca rather than cannabis ^[6]. Cannabis remained a minor pharmacy commodity with no documented cultural or political significance in the region during this period.

How modern myths developed

Contemporary cannabis media and advocacy frequently project modern medical cannabis frameworks backward, characterizing 1910s South American physicians as 'medical cannabis pioneers' or 'early advocates.' Disputed This represents retroactive storytelling rather than historical accuracy. The physicians who prescribed Cannabis indica tinctures in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, or Montevideo were not advocates; they were ordinary clinicians employing a standard remedy from their established materia medica, with no special commitment to cannabis and no evidence of campaigning for its use.

The genuine South American contribution to global cannabis history in this period is less flattering to modern advocacy narratives: Rodrigues Doria's 1915 paper became an influential template for criminalization arguments that would shape the international prohibition framework, culminating in cannabis inclusion in the 1925 Geneva Convention ^[7]. The decade's actual legacy is the beginning of criminalization, not the advancement of medical advocacy.

What we do not know

Many regional archives—provincial pharmacy registers, hospital formularies, small regional medical journals, and correspondence between practitioners—have not been systematically studied for cannabis content in the 1910s South American context. It is possible that future archival research will surface individual physicians or pharmacists who wrote favorably about cannabis therapeutics in this period and region. No data As of current published and accessible scholarship, however, no organized medical advocacy for cannabis has been documented in 1910s South America. Honest historical practice requires acknowledging this gap plainly rather than inventing a movement to fit contemporary narratives.

Sources

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