Folk Medicine in the South during Civil War

Shortage of Medicines

Much of the suffering in the war was because of a rapidly declining supply of medicine in the South as blockades restricted importation of all essentials.

Speculators: When enemy camps were overrun, speculators raided the medical stores capturing morphine, quinine and chloroform to resell at 50 times their original value. It was such a problem that General Lee called upon the secretary of war to put an end to the practice.

A well known manual on indigenous substitutes written by surgeon Maj. Francis Perye Porcher was “Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medical, Economic and Agricultural.”

Published in 1863, the 600-page book was distributed to medical officers to help aid the sick and wounded. It is said to have helped so many that Confederates were able to hold off the Union Army for two additional years.

Malaria was a major problem in the South.  Malaria became a constant problem where insects swarmed like a plague in swamps, marshes and bayous. 

Union surgeons had ready access to quinine, which is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, to treat malaria.  Confederate doctors improvised with boneset, dogwood berries, willow, poplar bark or the wahoo tree bark as substitutes.

Eupatorium, known as boneset, was a substitute for quinine.  It is also known to be used by slaves of the southern plantations to treat typhus.

Other medicinal substitutes used by Confederate surgeons included blackberry roots, charcoal, wild lettuce, peach leaf tea, rhubarb and a cordial made from persimmon and sugar to treat diarrhea and dysentery. These substitutes were undoubtedly less toxic than Union medical personnel’s affinity for mercury, used to treat everything from dysentery to headaches.  

Read Porcher's book Online: 

Museum of Civil War Medicine

article source:  TimeRecord News, Wichita  Falls, Texas