Rick Simpson is a Canadian engineer who worked at a hospital in Canada in 1997. Simpson had an accident in which he knocked his head and he would suffer from dizzy spells and ringing in his head for years, with prescribed medication having no little or no effect, and in some cases made the symptoms even worse.
After seeing a documentary highlighting the positive benefits of medical cannabis, Simpson sourced cannabis of his own accord and saw significant symptomatic improvement after his doctor refused to consider cannabis as a course of treatment. A few years later Simpson noticed three suspicious bumps on his arm that would turn out to be basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. After successfully treating his symptoms in the past with cannabis, he turned back to the cannabis plant for his treatment after hearing about a study from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that found THC impacted certain forms of cancer cells in mice.