some limbs, and maybe even lives, during the Civil War," says Cassandra Quave, senior author of the paper and assistant professor at Emory's Center for the Study of Human Health and the School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology.

Quave is an ethnobotanist, studying how people use plants in traditional healing practices, to uncover promising candidates for new drugs. "Ethnobotany is essentially the science of survival -- how people get by when limited to what's available in their immediate environment," she says. "The Civil War guide to plant remedies is a great example of that."

"Our research might one day benefit modern wound care, if we can identify which compounds are responsible for the antimicrobial activity," adds Micah Dettweiler, the first author of the paper.

If the active ingredients are identified, "ithis honors thesis. He has since graduated with a degree in biology and now works as a research specialist in the Quave lab.

"I was surprised to learn that far more Civil War soldiers died from disease than in battle," he says. "I was also surprised at how common amputation was as a medical treatment for an infected wound."

About one in 13 surviving Civil War soldiers went home with one or more missing limbs, according to the American Battlefield Trust.

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At the time of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, germ theory was in its developmental stages and only gradually beginning to gain acceptance. Formal medical training for physicians was also in its infancy. An antiseptic was simply defined as a tonic used to prevent "mortification of the flesh."