This is to propose a different name for the field you’ve dubbed “Cannabinopathic Medicine.”
“Cannabinopathic” just doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. Plus, to the layman (c’est moi), “pathic” invokes pathos and disease (which is what path refers to). I’m always a little jarred by the word “allopathic,” for the same reason. And I never understood how allo, meaning “other,” related to pathic…
When I started thinking about it (thanks to you and Bien), I thought why not just call it “Medicine?” Like Stanford and Cal play “the big game” but Harvard and Yale play “The Game.”
I suppose there has to be a way to distinguish Ayurvedic Medicine from Western Medicine.
Personally, I think we should call the field “herbal medicine,” and break out of the single-issue trap, and at the same time, struggle against capital-letter abuse.
But if you —the most enlightened of MDs!— can’t give up “pathic” and capital letters, I propose that you consider “Hempathic Medicine.”
“Hempathic Medicine” contains empathy —which use of hemp promotes, and which practitioners should feel— and reasserts the old English name for the plant. Hemp is the word that William Brooke O’Shaughnessy used in his famous paper explaining to his English and Scottish colleagues that in Calcutta he had used an extract of hemp —which the locals called ‘gunja’— to ease the agony of rabies and tetanus, prevent seizures, etc. I’ve often used the line, “O’Shaughnessy’s paper introduced Cannabis to Western medicine.” I should change it to “O’Shaughnessy’s paper notified European physicians that hemp in India was being used as medicine, and he had treated patients with it himself, successfully.” It’s not as snappy but it’s more meaningful.
Fred
