Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "medicine"

Sutter's Fort Hospital Doctors

2011-02-16T23:53:12Z

In a History of the Sacramento Medical Center, dated April, 1976, it is stated that, "On October 6, 1849 ~~1949~~ , Drs. W. Deal and J. S. Martin opened Sutter’s Fort Hospital - within the fort." We know that General Sutter had sold the fort to William Bayly in late 1849 ~~1949~~ and moved to his Hock farm. Another recent article on Sutter’s Fort says that the hospital was in operation during 1849-1850 in the southeast bastion of the fort. The wording “within the fort” must be to distinguish this from a small, separate adobe building used by Sutter as a hospital.

In December, 1849, the Sacramento Union newspaper carried the following ad:

Sutter’s Fort Hospital

Inside the Fort, formerly conducted by Drs. W. Grove Deal and James S. Martin, is now under the superintendence of Drs. James S. Martin and Benjamin R. Carman.
The Hospital has undergone necessary repairs for the comfortable accommodation of invalids this winter.

Like Dr. James S. Martin, Dr. W. Grove Deal was a practicing physician from Baltimore, MD, but he also was a Methodist preacher on Sundays, went hunting for gold and had other business activities. It is apparent that, by December, the job of running the hospital had fallen to Drs. Martin and Carman. Dr. Martin also had other interests, running for City Council in March of 1850 on the Rancho Ticket, but this probably was a strategic move to protect his hospital. He lost and a Dr. Volney Spaulding, who ran a competing hospital, was on the winning ticket. There were a number of such hospitals by 1850.

These were pretty rough days in Sacramento, cholera was rampant and it must have been difficult to keep a hospital in good shape. In the summer of 1850 a new ad appeared in the Transcript:

Sacramento Transcript, Volume 1, Number 53, 2 July 1850 — Page 5

SUTTER'S FORT HOSPITAL, - inside the Fort, by Drs. James S. Martin and B. R. Carman, having been thoroughly repaired, is now ready for the comfortable accommodation of patients. The salubrity of the location is evident to every one. The Hospital being in a large adobe building, it is exempt from that extreme heat which is incident to this climate during the summer. Terms moderate. References—Dr. T. G. Chapman, Dr. J. B. Bridgman, Dr. S. McClure, Dr. S. P. Thomas, Dr. L. A. Birdsall, Dr. Deal, Dr. W. Bryarly.

So Dr. Deal was still used as a hospital reference.

In August of 1850 there was a revolt by newcomers to Sacramento against holders of land titles given by General Sutter (in his book “Notes of a Voyage to California via Cape Horn”, Samuel C. Upham considers the newcomers to be squatters). Shots were fired and people were killed. The sherriff, the mayor and Dr. Bryarly (see above) were all involved. The state of medicine in those days is shown by the case of Mayor Bigelow, who had to have his thumb amputated and then, when “mortification” set in, was sent to San Francisco where his whole arm was amputated.

All this had occurred in the vicinity of Fort Sutter and it seems quite possible that the hospital was damaged. Doctor Martin may well have been away at the time. Pencilled notes by a grandson of his, Dr. James Lay Martin of Baltimore, state that “He lost everything when someone had taken his hospital and fort when he had gone by clipper ship to Panama to obtain medical supplies.”

This interpretation is supported by the fact that, in November, Drs. Martin and Carman opened a free dispensary:

Sacramento Transcript, Volume 2, Number 12, 7 November 1850 — Page 1

SACRAMENTO CITY DISPENSARY, K STREET, in " Transcript" Building. In anticipation of there being a great deal of distress in our community this season by sickness, the Subscribers, who have been Physicians of the Sutter's Fort Hospital since the first settlement of this city, have opened a FREE OFFICE or General Dispensary, where those who are not able to pay the fees of an attending physician, and all others who may patronise our Establishment, can obtain Medicines at a low rate, and Advice Gratis. JAMES S MARTIN, M.D. and BENJN R CARMAN, M.D.

An adjoining advertisement for a San Francisco dispensary contains a list that may well describe what was meant by “Medicines”:

Drugs and Medicines: Lemon Syrup, Stoughton’s Bitters, Sarsaparilla Mead, Essence Peppermint, Holden’s Disentary Cordial, Fever and Ague Remedy.

Meanwhile the Sacramento City Hospital run by Dr. Vonley Spaulding had gotten into a heap of trouble for its terrible treatment of indigent patrons and had been cited by a local grand jury – a charge that was denied by Spaulding. The City Council sent a committee to investigate and this was Dr. Martin's testimony to the Council as reported in the Sacramento Transcript of Friday November 15, 1850:

DEPOSITION OF DR. JAS. S. MARTIN.

Questions:
1. Please inform me if you were the attending Physician to the City Hospital from the 24th of October, 1850, to the 1st day of Nov., the day on which the visiting committee of the Council made their visit for the purpose of investigating the charges preferred by the Grand Jury ? Ans- I was.
2. Was the report of the Grand Jury sustained by the facts presented to their Committee, when they visited that institution the latter part of October ? Ans-They certainly were to the fullest extent.
3. What was the condition of the beds, bedding and personal vestments of its inmates during your stay there ? Ans- The beds and bedding were in a very filthy condition, generally, in the adobe ward. The beds, bedding and clothes of many of the inmates, and indeed the entire ward itself, were infested with vermin, from the filth that prevailed and general want of cleanliness. Of these facts I spoke to Dr. Stansbury — one of the proprietors — and he said it could not be remedied at that time.
4. Were there bathing establishments connected with the City Hospital, or bathtubs; or was it customary to use ablution and sponging the cutaneous surface of patients in that institution? Ans- There was no bathing establishment whatever in the Hospital, and only one bathing tub, which was used for other purposes. — Less than half the patients were supplied with sheets, and they in a filthy condition, as before remarked. The air in the entire ward was quite offensive, and insalubrious, and unsafe not only for patients but medical attendants. There being no ceiling, and the wall of the building only about nine feet high, of course ill-ventilated and unhealthy in the highest degree.
5. Was it customary to change the linen of patients, and bed clothes, oftener than once in seven or eight days ? Ans- Such was the custom, as the proprietors told me, but they were not changed at all whilst I was there.
6. Did the proprietors, very soon after the visit of the Grand Jury, change the bed clothes and clothing of the inmates? In a word, was there not a general cleaning up a day or two before the visitors sent by the Council came out? Ans. There was a general renovation at that time.
7. Were you, for a time, in the Baltimore Alms House, as one of the resident physicians? Ans- I was.
8. Did you ever observe there, or do you know of any Hospital in Europe or this country, conducted on such principles as above detailed? Ans. I never have, nor do I believe any one else ever did, here or elsewhere.

JAMES S. MARTIN, M. D. Nov. 13, 1850.

So we see that James Stansbury Martin was working at the Sacramento City Hospital by the end of 1850 and it is probable that the Sutter’s Fort Hospital was now closed for business. The record is not clear where he was working for the remainder of his stay in California but we know that he remained in Sacramento and made application to the State Assembly in 1854 for reimbursment for losses he incurred by running the Sutter’s Fort Hospital for the poor and destitute:

THE DAILY UNION
California Legislature – Fifth Session
Sacramento, March 16, 1854
Senate

"Mr. Colby presented a petition from J. S. Martin, M.D., stating that during the years ’49 and ’50 he had suffered a great loss of time and money in attending to destitute sick in the Sutter’s Fort Hospital estabished by him. His losses amounted to $33,124.27, and he received only $8,684, leaving a balance of $22,440.27 due him by the State. Referred to Committee on Claims."

The final Senate Report on this claim states that: "The claimant, at the time of the dispensation of these charities, was a practicing physician and surgeon, and was a member of the Council of Sacramento City. The claim of James S. Martin is for the sum of $22,440.27, and may be readily understood by the examination of the following bill, the same being for the cost, maintenance and charges of a private hospital, kept at Sutter's Fort in 1849." The costs are then itemized.

The document does not say what happened to the hospital and the claim was turned down by the Senate committee because, "they were unanimously of the opinion, that it would be improper for the State to compensate individuals for losses in their business, even though the business should have partaken somewhat, in its nature, of a public benefaction."

The California Farmer San Francisco, May 3, 1855, has the following item, “We have received from the Purser of the Sonora, J. S. Martin, Esq., MD, a fine specimen of coca pod, containing the seed from which the Mexicans make their chocolate. It was brought from Acapulco.” Dr. Martin apparently remained in California until some time after May of 1855, when he returned to Baltimore and married Lucretia Griffith Warfield on April 18, 1857.

The Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 34, p 1084 provides the following biography:

James Stansbury Martin, M.D., died in Baltimore, Md., April 14, aged 76. He was born in that city April 2, 1824, being the son of Dr. Samuel B. Martin, a surgeon of the War of 1812. He was educated at the Baltimore College, took his M.D. at Washington University, Baltimore, in 1844, and was resident physician to the Baltimore Almshouse, 1846-7. He resided in California from 1849 to 1855, and was surgeon to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and founder of Sutter's Fort Hospital. He returned to Baltimore in 1859, where he remained until 1861, when he removed to Brookeville, Md., and practiced there four years. He then returned to Baltimore, where he remained until his death. He was one of the oldest members of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty.

Given the fact that his father, Samuel Blair Martin, MD ~~Samuel Baird Fox, MD,~~ had been a ship’s surgeon for much of his career, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was certainly a very logical job opportunity for his oldest son. An uncle named Isaac White Martin was a clipper ship captain and the family must have had excellent connections in the maritime industry. What is a little unclear is whether James Martin left Baltimore before or after he knew of the discovery of gold and whether he maintained a connection with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company after he got to California. A little history of the company seems in order.

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company had been founded with the idea of providing mail and cargo service from San Francisco to Panama, where the goods would be transported to the Atlantic side to be picked up by other steamships bound for ports on the East Coast. Remember that the treaty with Mexico had been signed on March 10, 1848 and California was now U.S. Territory. The first three ships of this line were the California, the Oregon and the Panama. All were new, wooden-hull, side-paddle-wheel steamers, about 200 feet long, that had come around Cape Horn. The California left New York on October 6, 1848, before news of the discovery of gold had gotten to the East Coast, and arrived in San Francisco on February 28, 1849, having picked up hundreds of gold-seekers in Panama who had gotten the word in December, while the California was en-route. Most of the passengers and crew decamped immediately for the gold country, so service back to Panama had to be delayed.

General Smith, new commander of US Army forces in the Pacific was on the California and William Tecumseh Sherman – who had already been in California for several years - boarded the ship to greet him. All this is in Sherman’s Memoirs.

The Oregon left New York on Dec. 8, 1848 and arrived in San Francisco Bay on April 1, 1849. Captain Pearson moored his ship in Sausalito, would not let his crew desert the ship, loaded on coal and made the first of many scheduled mail trips down to Panama and back. The Oregon carried a number of Army and Navy personnel who picked Mare Island for the Navy base and Benicia for the Army arsenal. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company also selected Benicia as their depot, avoiding the hundreds of idle ships moored off San Francisco.

The Panama left New York on Feb. 15 and arrived in San Francisco (presumably at Benicia) on June 4, 1849 and there were now three ships in the mail service to Panama and back. Actually the Panama would have been second to arrive but had to turn back to New York because of an engine failure.

It seems probable that Dr. James Stansbury Martin knew of the Gold Rush and was on either the Oregon or the Panama as ship’s surgeon. His biographers say that Dr. Martin held this position from 1849 through 1855 but we now know that he had many other duties in Sacramento. How he managed to do this is a mystery but it is known that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company did maintain a service to Sacramento during this period and he must have had an understanding with them.

Dr. Martin had a younger brother, William H. Martin, who came to California in December, 1849, as an 18 year old messenger for the Adams Express Company, subsequently making many trips back and forth from San Francisco and New York. He then remained in California and, in 1868, became Land Commissioner for the “California Immigrant Union”, a colonizing effort that brought many new settlers to the state. In 1872, he wrote the introduction to All About California, a book put together by the California Immigrant Union that received very wide distribution.

Dr. W. Grove Deal was also a physician from Baltimore, arriving in California in the Spring of 1849 by way of Panama. The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 42, p 477, has the following description:

"Among those who came to Auburn in May, 1849, was Dr. Deal of Baltimore, a physician and a Methodist preacher. He was very enthusiastic in stating his purpose to become one of the " honest miners," and calling a gathering together with a long tin dinner-horn, he expressed his intention to dig with them, and to institute divine worship the next Sunday, and he closed by making the hills echo with a cheery hymn. Monday morning's sunrise saw the doctor in the mines with tin pan, pick, and shovel. Eleven o'clock saw him with his shovel battered, his pick broken, his hands bruised and blistered, and his clothes muddy, placing his tools and tin horn in a wagon bound for Sutter's Fort. It was well he did, for together with another good Samaritan he leased a part of Sutter's Fort for a hospital, and when the forlorn bands of immigrants reached the Fort they found medical attention and care, which in many cases saved life or eased the passage to the grave."

Dr. Deal was quite an orator and served as an Assembly Member during the first session of the California Legislature. Apparently, he also went back East later on since he served honorably as a Surgeon during the Civil War. His son, W. E. F. Deal, came to California in 1859 and made quite a name for himself as a lawyer, establishing a practice in both California and Nevada, according to the History of the Bench and Bar of California.

Joseph M. Fox, III
February, 2011

Current health care reform not enough, doctors say

2010-10-13T03:56:54Z

The situation with health care is getting worse faster than the federal health overhaul is going to make it better, said a group of doctors lobbying for government-run, universal health coverage, who spoke on the steps of the Capitol Monday.

“We’re headed for disaster, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has not helped at all,” said Dr. Paul Hochfeld, a emergency room physician who founded the group, which calls itself the Mad as Hell Doctors.

The federal health care reforms adopted earlier this year require states to set up insurance pools to provide affordable coverage to those who do not have it now. It is estimated that the pools will extend coverage to 32 million uninsured people. But, as the costs of medical care and insurance continue to rise, an estimated 14,000 people lose their health care coverage daily.

At that rate, an additional 40 million people would be added to the ranks of the uninsured by the time the reforms are fully implemented in 2019, outstripping the effect of the pools by 8 million, the group said.

Moreover, it has recently been estimated that between 40,000 and 45,000 people die every year because they lack insurance. That 45,000 figure – yearly – is almost as many as died during the entire Vietnam War, and that situation produced a deafening public outcry.

Many people will continue to be without insurance under the current reforms, and they will continue to be at risk of dying unnecessarily, Hochfeld and the others said.

Speaking on the Capitol steps with a loudspeaker and banners and tables set up with information, Hochfeld said the federal overhaul passed by the Congress in March and April was beneficial. But it does not go far enough. The reforms adopted do little or nothing to control medical costs, and costs continue to increase.

Last year, health care spending grew by 1.1 percent.

The United States currently spends more than twice as much on medical care as other developed nations.

“We haven’t fixed it yet,” Hochfeld said.

The Mad as Hell Doctors’ stop in Sacramento is part of a tour of California, with 21 other rallies in various parts of the state. The group calls itself “Mad as Hell” to signify its members’ displeasure with the fact that discussion of a single-payer system has been excluded from the debates over health care reform. They say it has been actively excluded through the efforts of the insurance and drug industries and conservative lobbyists.

The Capitol steps rally drew a very small audience of perhaps fewer than 20 people, something Hochfeld acknowledged while speaking. He said it was clear that during most of their tour stops they were not getting a huge contingent of undecided members of the public, but rather were “preaching to the choir,” and he asked the rhetorical question of whether rallying those already converted to the single-payer position was necessary.

He concluded that it was important because it keeps the single-payer discussion alive.

Talking in an interview afterwards, Hochfeld said it seems clear that the general public has become disillusioned with talking about health care reform. And he admitted that it sometimes feels as if his group is “storming the Bastille with rubber spears . . . . But someone has to do it,” he said.

Mad Doctors Push Universal Health Care

2010-10-08T22:21:53Z

Ever since President Barak Obama’s health care overhaul was passed by Congress in March, health care reform has been moved off the front pages, and discussion has died away.

But next week it’s coming back, to Sacramento at least.

A group of doctors is touring the state, visiting 22 cities and holding informational colloquies to push for a single-payer system that would provide medical coverage for all.

They call themselves the Mad as Hell Doctors, and they are calling themselves that in earnest. They say they are mad because the discussion of reform of the health care system has been co-opted by industry: insurance companies, drug companies and for-profit health care systems. The industry has prevented any serious discussion of a government-run program providing coverage for all Americans, like the systems in Canada and Great Britain, they said.

“Our public policy is being hijacked by the industry to manipulate public policy so that we have health care policy that is more about profits than about health,” said Dr. Paul Hockfeld, an Oregon-based, emergency room physician who founded the group.

The Mad as Hell Doctors Tour of California comes to the steps of the Capitol for a rally and information session at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The group is going to be in Davis on Sunday.

The tour’s motto is: “This fall the rubber glove meets the road.”

The group’s position on health care reform is that President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is window dressing that really does not address the essential problem with health care. The problem is the escalating cost.

The Obama health care reform “does a few good things that are beneficial to a few people, but overall it further entrenches the health insurance industry by subsidizing their flawed product with more tax dollars,” according to a group statement.

According to an analysis published in the journal Health Affairs, health care spending grew 1.1 percent in 2009, the largest single-year increase ever. Health care spending now consumes 17 percent of the country’s total gross national product, compared to an average of about 5 percent in other developed countries. Some economists predict that the U.S. figure could jump to 40 percent by the year 2030.

It is because health care is so expensive that it is difficult to provide health care insurance coverage for all. It is estimated that 6.5 million Californians are without health insurance.

Last year, a study said that there are 40,000-45,000 deaths in the United States every year that can be attributed to a lack of medical insurance. That is more than kidney disease kills, the study noted. The study, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health, said that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40-percent higher risk of death compared to those with insurance. That is largely because if people don’t have insurance, they don’t have access to the health care system before problems become serious, and they don’t take advantage of preventive health care.

The federal health care reform requires that states form insurance pools that will provide coverage for some of those who do not have insurance now. But those pools are not big enough to provide the kind of competition that would keep health care costs down, the Mad as Hell Doctors argue.

Therefore, if something more – something different – is not done soon, “We’ll keep pouring hundreds of millions into an inefficient, insurance-led system that isn’t working,” said Robert Vizzard, a local member of the group and an emergency room physician who works in Stockton.

Vizzard said he is angry and frustrated because of what he sees daily in the emergency department. He sees patients come in because they are sick, and he works hard to help. But many ot those he sees have no insurance. So, when those people leave, he might give them a prescription, one that could keep them out of the emergency department in the future, but he knows they will not be able to afford it and they will not fill it.

The system, he said, is “just wasteful and inefficient, and it leaves a lot of people out.”

A single-payer, government-run, medical coverage program is what the country has in Medicare already, Vizzard said. And, it could save at least 20 percent on the nation’s health care bill. That is the amount of every dollar spent on health care that is thought to go to insurance company overhead and profits.

The Mad as Hell Doctors’ position is somewhat radical among physicians. As a rule, physicians have not been in the avant garde of the reform discussions. After all, physicians are paid by the system. Most physicians have considerable autonomy to do what they want, how they want, and in the past they argued that they warranted that autonomy because of their expertise in what they do and how they do it. Physicians profit by the system – they don’t pay to support it.

No mainstream medical association has come out in favor of a single-payer system. “Single-payer systems are plagued with an undersupply of medical personnel, long waiting periods and a lack of patient choice,” the American Medical Association has said.

Only the American College of Physicians, the organization that represents internists, has come out with anything like support for a single-payer system. In 2007, the college published a paper identifying single-payer as one of two health-care reform proposals that it could support. The other was a system in which access to coverage was legally guaranteed. But the college has not actively pushed for either one.

It is not a coincidence that both Vizzard and Hochfeld are both emergency physicians. Emergency physicians see the most uninsured people because people without insurance end up in the emergency department for their care. Emergency departments are not allowed to turn people in medical need away.

The other types of doctors overrepresented in the Mad as Hell Doctors, and other similar groups such as Physicians for a National Health Program, are primary-care physicians, psychiatrists and public health physicians. They tend to make less than physicians in other highly technical or surgical specialties, so they tend to be people who are drawn to their type of practice by a motivation to do good more than a desire for prestige and income.

The average psychiatrist, for example, makes $169,000 a year, according to studentdoc.com, while the average oral and maxillofacial surgeon makes $515,000 a year, and the average cardiologist makes $403,000 a year.

That said, physicians tend to be the kind of people who could do well whatever they did, and they choose to go into medicine to help others, said Dr. William Skeen, executive director of Physicians for a National Health Program California. And many medical students and younger physicians are supportive of the single-payer idea. Skeen said the movement among physicians is growing, particularly among those entering the profession.

“I think 100 percent of physicians in private practice recognize the shortcomings of our current system,” Skeen added.

The Mad as Hell tour has drawn reported audiences of 60 to 100 at its stops before the Capitol. Some are other physicians, but most are not. In Arcata, where people tend to be a bit more liberal and a bit more fringe, the group drew a reported 200 people.

“There absolutely is a movement forming for single-payer in this country,” saidSkeen, who attended the tour stop in Berkeley and whose own group tends to overlap with the Mad as Hell Doctors. “The Mad as Hell Doctors tour is as genuine and grassroots as you can get.”

Second Saturday to Feature Unusual ‘Gallery’: Sutter Capitol Pavilion

2010-10-08T17:12:36Z

SACRAMENTO – Mayor Kevin Johnson insists Sacramento’s popular Second Saturday art walk is alive and well, and this month includes a different kind of gallery to tour: a medical building.

“For anyone who thinks Second Saturday is dead, it’s not,” the mayor said during a press conference Tuesday for the grand opening of the Sutter Capitol Pavilion at 2725 Capitol Ave. “Sutter is opening up its new medical facility to the public for Second Saturday in order to showcase its art installation and the local artists who created the pieces.”

The public open house is billed as “Art & Medicine” and will feature tours of the artwork installed throughout the medical office building and outpatient services center. Much of the art pieces are commissioned works and limited editions from local and regional artists, several of whom will be on hand to talk about their work. In addition, Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento partnered with the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento for a rotating display of artwork in a hallway facing 28th Street that will also be open for the tour.

Among the local artists who will be on hand to show their work are Jerald Silva, Kristen Hoard, Maria Winkler, Deanna Marsh, Nikki Solone and Merle Serlin. There will be hors d’oeuvres from Biba restaurant and Paragary’s Restaurant Group, and wine tasting from Revolution Wine. Third Floor Jazz Club, featuring Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento emergency room doctor Scott Stringer, M.D., will perform.

The Sutter Capitol Pavilion building is a work of art in its own regard too. Designed by Lionakis and Boulder Associates, and constructed by The Boldt Company, the 200,000-square-foot medical office building houses 40 specialist physicians’ offices, 128 exam and procedure rooms, four outpatient operating rooms and 13 outpatient imaging rooms, along with endoscopy and interventional radiology services. Visitors will have the chance to tour several of these areas within the medical office building as well

“Art & Medicine,” which is free and open to the public, will be held from 3:30-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, at the Sutter Capitol Pavilion, located across L Street from Sutter’s Fort. Free parking will be available at the Sutter Community Garage on 28th and N streets.

For its $724 million midtown expansion, Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento is putting an emphasis on creating a healing environment through the arts. The Sutter Capitol Pavilion is the medical center’s first building to open in the expansion, and it features more than 300 pieces of art specially chosen for Sutter’s healing mission.

For more information on “Art & Medicine” and the expansion plans, go to www.sutterdistrict.com.

The science of THC medicine

2009-08-20T04:49:07Z

Regardless of the smoldering controversy cannabis stirs up in Sacramento City Hall, the state Capitol and Washington D.C., the global scientific community has examined the drug with increasing interest recently. Local patients and doctors can't say enough about the groundbreaking potential of THC as a pharmaceutical.

There's a fairly large medical cannabis community in Sacramento, of patients, caregivers and researchers. Some dispensaries work directly with patients and doctors to bridge the gap between medical knowledge and social support.

Sacramento resident Thomas Coy has worked with the Capitol Wellness dispensary since it opened in 2004. He's a patient, an activist and a 28-year survivor of HIV/AIDS.

"Cannabis has helped me tremendously," he said. "I've been on medical programs and trials since 1983."

Cannabis allows Coy to cope with and overcome many symptoms of the virus. Smoking four joints a day helps prevent seizure, relieve nausea, fight pneumonia and stimulate his appetite.

"If it wasn't for medical marijuana, I'd be dead," Coy said. "Doctors say I'm a living miracle."

Despite a condition that many would find disabling, Coy keeps an active lifestyle and leads Cap Wellness support groups. Last week, Coy's HIV/AIDS group took a camping and whitewater rafting trip.

Coy counsels patients both socially and legally, and has worked for many years with the patients' rights advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. He has testified numerous times on behalf of federally-raided patients and clubs.

"I get out there and I raise my voice," he said. "I say 'this is medicine, hands off it.'"

Patients like Coy are a common sight at dispensaries and rallies, fighting for their rights to medicate for AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, fibermyalgia, glaucoma... the list goes on.

Medical studies on cannabis took a long time to evolve, and Dr. Frank Lucido was there to watch.

Frank Lucido has been a general family practice doctor for 30 years. Since cannabis was legalized for medical use in 1996, he has been an outspoken and highly regarded supporter of herbal medicine. He spoke with The Sacramento Press to offer medical perspective on the drug.

"I started getting into it right away after it was legal," he said. "Every doctor knows they have about 20 slam-dunk patients that could benefit greatly from medical cannabis."

While Lucido was getting his M.D. in the '70s, doctors weren't learning about cannabis, aside from its reportedly high potential for abuse.

"The dangers of cannabis we knew were overblown," he said. "All of us saw people using cannabis in med school and still performing extremely well."

Once California's medical cannabis legalization measure, Proposition 215, got on the ballot, Lucido's interest was piqued. He had heard rumors that cannabis had some vague medical benefits and began checking out studies on what exactly cannabis did.

"There's still a lot we don't know, but we do know there are at least 70 reactive cannabinoids as well as many CBDs," he said.

Cannabinoids are essentially the 'stuff' in cannabis that gets people high. They're a family of chemicals that mimic a substance that the human brain naturally produces, a cannabinoid known as anandamide. There are receptors for anandamide throughout the body and brain. There's a wide variety of cannabinoids in cannabis, but most are concentrated into delta-9 tetrahydracannabinol, known colloqually as THC. More background on THC can be found at 3dchem.com.

Generally speaking, the more THC, the more potent the cannabis, at least for its relaxing properties. THC can be used as a sleep aid, pain suppressant, anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsant, appetite stimulant, muscle relaxant and - perhaps most commonly known - as an anti-depressant.

CBD is an acronym for cannabidiol, a family of substances in cannabis that are a bit of unexplored territory. In ongoing research, CBDs have been found to have anti-viral and even anti-tumor properties. Yes, this means that cannabis may help to prevent cancer, according to recent UCLA studies.

"It was announced about two or three years ago that cannabis didn't increase the risk of cancer, and it was briefly stated that certain doses might even be protective," Lucido said. Several other studies that have successfully used cannabis to shrink tumors in mice have been ignored despite their results, according to Lucido.

It's popular wisdom that it is impossible to overdose on cannabis, as the estimated lethal dosage adds up to smoking 1,500 pounds in 15 minutes. Yet, as it turns out, even if you took in a lethal dose (with Janis Joplin's lungs and Willie Nelson's stash), you'd still survive. Interestingly, there aren't cannabinoid receptors in the medulla oblongata, the part of your brain that controls breathing and other vital functions.

"That means that someone who smokes a fatal dose may be very sleepy, but they wouldn't die," Lucido said.

Although impossible to die from any dose of cannabis, smoking pot does carry other side effects. There's one major one — the side effect that isn't a side effect: Getting high. The psychoactive effect of cannabis can be either a euphoria (pleasant) or a dysphoria (unpleasant); some people enjoy it, others don't. If they turn to cannabis for relief from serious illness, however, dysphoric patients can get over their dislike and even become immune to the 'stoned' effect, something many sources have noted.

Cannabis can also be a mild lung irritant, but that can be avoided by eating a pot brownie or using a vaporizer.

Given the wide potential of cannabis' medical usage, it is still fairly uncommon for doctors to make regular recommendations for patients to use the drug.

"Most doctors are hesitant to recommend cannabis because of two reasons," Lucido said. "Either they don't know about its medical properties or they're afraid of the medical board and law enforcement. I keep myself to a very high standard and I was still investigated by the medical board."

Lucido, a private practice doctor, said that he screens his patients by asking for corroborating evidence of their condition. He quizzes any applicants under the age of 21 with two questions. First: "Are you living at home?" Second: "Are you hiding it from your parents?" He said this sifts out about 90 percent of young applicants.

While cannabis can have remarkable effects on the lives of people living with terminal disease, those cases are fairly rare. More commonly, patients seek treatment for mental tension and physical pain. A survey of Lucido's 1,045 patients in 2008 found that 61% medicated for chronic pain, 7% for anxiety, 6% for migraines, 4.4% for gastrointestinal disorders (indigestion, nausea, anorexia), and 3.4% for depression. Many other disorders take up the last 18%.

New studies consistently point out new uses for cannabis medication, as the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) continues to conduct research throughout the state on THC's effects on everything from spinal cord injury to MS muscle disorders. Interestingly, Lucido said he recently heard of another application for the sensual herb: increasing the female libido. While licentious cannabis-smoking females were key plot devices back in the 'Reefer Madness' days, new findings have shown that cannabis' come-hither effects can be used to stimulate a dormant libido.

Scientific exploration of cannabis' medical properties has yielded some promising fruit. Now, with increased local and national attention, research seems likely to keep on growing.

Photos courtesy of AngelJustice.org and David Scharf and Peter Dasil of Corbis

Wine, Food, and Community Service

2009-01-08T04:25:10Z

Please join us for the 29th Annual UC Davis Wine Tasting and Auction Benefit for the Student-Run Free Clinics. Several clinics around Sacramento serve the community’s indigent population, providing care to those who might otherwise go without. At the same time, the clinics provide an environment in which medical students not only learn valuable skills, but also develop an appreciation for discrepancies in the healthcare system, Sacramento’s cultural diversity, and the way in which a healthcare provider can affect change in the community. Every weekend, UC Davis medical and undergraduate students work side-by-side with volunteer physicians at seven free clinics: Bayanihan Clinic, Clinica Tepati, Imani Clinic, Joan Viteri Memorial Clinic, Paul Hom Clinic, Shifa Clinic, and Willow Project. The clinics are administered by students with the help of many volunteers and with funding from generous donors.

The Benefit will feature wine from area wineries and food from local Sacramento restaurants. Both silent and live auctions offer a wide range of exciting items. All of the proceeds from this elegant evening of fine wine, gourmet food, and first-class entertainment will help keep the clinics’ doors open. Please help us continue to serve the community and to create a next generation of physicians who are compassionate social servants.

WHEN: Saturday, January 24th, 2009

WHERE: UC Davis School of Medicine

4610 X Street, Sacramento

WEBSITE: http://wineandauction.ucdavis.edu