"Most recently, as the medical value of marijuana has been rediscovered, medicine has been searching for ways to "pharmaceuticalize" the plant--find a way to harness its easily accessible benefits in a patch or inhaler that doctors can prescribe, corporations patent, and governments regulate. Whenever possible, Paracelsus's lab-coated descendants have synthesized the active ingredients in plant drugs, allowing medicine to dispense with the plant itself--and any reminders of its pagan past."