Fitz Hugh Ludlow

(1836 - 1870)

Warned by his apothecary friend about the bottle labeled cannabis indica—“That stuff is deadly poison”—Fitz Hugh Ludlow administered to himself his first dose when the friend “was out of sight.” He published his account at the age of twenty-one—The Hasheesh Eater—in 1857 and went on to write for magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, to which he contributed a series of articles about his journey to the West in 1863 with the painter Albert Bierstadt. He met Brigham Young in Salt Lake City and later camped in Yosemite.