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

Hiding Family Valuables from Plunder

The suffering and bravery of southern women in the American Civil War can inspire us.  Northern soldiers confiscated wood for fuel, chickens, garden crops, pigs, out of necessary.  Rogue soldiers often robbed a family's wealth.

Hiding family valuables

"Word was sent by a neighbor's young houseboy, who sneaked through the woods to their home to warn them that the Union soldiers were foraging,  and so they had a little time to hide things."

Food and valuables were hidden in nearby swamps or woods.   

"We heard that Sherman had burnt Columbia and was advancing towards Fayetteville N.C. We began  to make preparations for the expected raid by hiding such things as we  could unbeknowing to the Negroes. My brother Elisha and I hauled away two barrels of lard, pretending in the presence of the Negroes that we  were carrying it for delivery to a purchaser in the neighborhood...

After leaving home and got out of sight we drove into the woods some distance where we had previously dug holes to receive it and  there buried it destroying all traces of the affair. After we had finished, it was too soon to return home so we spent the time collecting  wood to take back home. In due time we reached home with our load of  wood, reporting in the presence of the Negroes, the safe delivery of the  lard handing in a pretended receipt. "