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  • Hashish and Assassination April 24, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Hashish and Assassination

    The Assassins were a well known medieval Shiite sect who delighted in sending out their fida’is (assassins) to kill enemies with daggers. Our word ‘assassinate’ (already used routinely by Dante), of course, comes from these charming individuals. The etymology of Assassin in Arabic has long been supposed to come from the word for hashish (Hashshashin […]

    Ergot Madness in Historians March 7, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Ergot Madness in Historians

    Ergot is a fungus that grows on some crops, particularly rye, and is most common in northern temporal climes. When ingested by humans or animals it can cause hallucinations, temporary neurological disorders and circulation difficulties including burning limbs and, in serious cases, gangrene: there are records of peasants who lost all four limbs to ergot poisoning […]

    British Iron Age Peyote February 28, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    British Iron Age Peyote

    There are lots of internet sites out there talking (and sometimes raving) about how to have visions courtesy of plants that grow in the British and Irish countryside: the ‘fruits of the forest’ as Beach’s disreputable younger brother calls them. This is not the aim of the present post. Rather it is to ask: what […]

    Victorian Cannabis Use February 15, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Victorian Cannabis Use

    Cannabis became illegal in the United Kingdom once the 1925 Dangerous Drug Acts came into force in 1928. However, before that there was a long tradition of ‘hemp’ smoking in the country: mainly for medicinal reasons. Regrettably we know little about British hemp-smokers. Victorian interest in opium often reached almost hysterical levels: but interest in […]

    Ancient Saunas with Cannabis January 29, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Ancient Saunas with Cannabis

    What is the first recorded use of cannabis? There follows what is unquestionably the first European reference, though it relates to a Steppe people. Herodotus (4,73) is here describing the Scythians, the barbarians beyond the Black Sea, a region note that Herodotus may have visited: certainly he had lots of surprisingly accurate information about Scythian […]

    Seduction by Hashish June 14, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Seduction by Hashish

    Modern proponents of the legalization of marijuana point out that other societies, particularly Arab society, never had any problems with cannabis and its derivatives. Beach, rather innocently believed the same thing, until he read recently about the fear of hashish in the medieval Arab world in a fine chapter by Franz Rosenthal in his Man […]

    Weird Jobs in the 1881 UK Census July 7, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Weird Jobs in the 1881 UK Census

    Spent the night and early morning looking for a much loved missing tortoise: mission accomplished at 6.42 amdist tears and recriminations. How do you punish a tortoise? This morning trying to come down from too much chocolate and coca cola. Took to racing through the 1881 census looking for unusual jobs and strange households: winding […]

    Vision Quest #2: The Rainbow Enema May 31, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Vision Quest #2: The Rainbow Enema

    How could a ‘serious’ bizarrist ignore  Brian Stross and Justin Kerr’s 1990 exploratory article ‘Notes on the Mayan Vision Quest by Enema’? After all, in this piece the two intrepid Meso-American scholars make the case that enemas were used to pump hallucinogenic substances into the bodies of Mayan visionaries. And the image above (and the […]

    The Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Are More Rainbow Coloured on the Other Side of the Fence April 11, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    The Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Are More Rainbow Coloured on the Other Side of the Fence

    Hallucinogens are frequently found in the traditional religious life of hunter-gatherers and rural communities. There are, of course, literally hundreds of different ways of intoxicating yourself ranging from toad glands to nutmeg, from jimson weed to ergot spores. And naturally, these techniques which, depending on your point of view, canker or enhance reality, are important […]

    Cocaine, Nicotine and Ancient Egypt October 24, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Cocaine, Nicotine and Ancient Egypt

    As regular readers of this column will attest Beachcombing is your typical small-minded historian. He doesn’t much like novelty and if there is a controversy he will float effortlessly into the orthodox camp. But with the argument over cocaine use in the ancient world he risks, however briefly, going the other way: if only to […]