Iodine and bromine were sometimes used to treat infections, according to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, although the reason for their effectiveness was unknown.

Other conventional medicines available at the time included quinine, for treating malaria, and morphine and chloroform, to block pain.

Military field hospitals within the Confederacy, however, did not have reliable access to these medicines due to a blockade -- the Union Navy closely monitored the major ports of the South to prevent the Confederacy from trading.

Seeking alternatives, the Confederacy commissioned Francis Porcher, a botanist and surgeon from South Carolina, to compile a book of medicinal plants of the Southern states, including plant remedies used by Native Americans and enslaved Africans. "Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests," published in 1863, was a major compendiumof uses for different plants, including a description of 37 species for treating gangrene and other infections. Samuel Moore, the Confederate Surgeon General, drew from Porcher's work to produce a document called "Standard supply table of the indigenous remedies for field service and the sick in general hospitals."

For the current study, the researchers focused on three plant species Porcher cited for antiseptic use that grow in Lullwater Preserve on the Emory campus. They included two common hardwood trees -- the white oak (Quercus alba) and the tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) -- as well as a thorny, woody shrub commonly known as the devil's walking stick (Aralia spinosa).

Samples of these three plants were gathered from campus specimens, based on Porcher's specifications. Extracts were taken from white oak bark and