Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 17

Micah Dettweiler collected samples of the plants involved in the study,
including devil's walking stick, from Lullwater Preserve on the Emory
campus.

discussed the book and decided to research which compounds
are responsible for the antimicrobial activity and to explore how
they could be used in modern-day wound care.
For his thesis, Dettweiler researched three plants Porcher
said had antiseptic properties that were effective in treating
infections: white oak (Quercus alba), tulip poplar (Liriodendron
tulipifera) and a thorny shrub called the devil's walking stick
(Aralia spinosa).
"We wanted to pick a few plants that were easily available
and abundant," Quave says. "We didn't want to work on any-

LOUIS TONSMEIRE

LOUIS TONSMEIRE

LOUIS TONSMEIRE

STEPHEN NOWLAND

S

cientists at Emory University in Atlanta have
picked up where Civil War battlefield surgeons
left off in using native plants of Georgia and
the Southeast to treat infections. They are leading
a research project to discover how extracts from
the same plant species used in Confederate field
hospitals can be developed into medicines to treat
modern-day wounds.
The key researchers are Cassandra Quave, a
medical ethnobotanist who is curator of the Emory
University Herbarium and a professor of dermatology and human health, and her former student,
Micah Dettweiler.
The project grew out of Dettweiler's honors
thesis about a Confederate states guide for using
native plants to treat infections. The guide was
based on a book, "Resources of Southern Fields and
Forests," written in 1863 by South Carolina botanist
and surgeon Francis Porcher. The Confederacy
asked Porcher to write the book because a Union
naval blockade was preventing Southern physicians
from getting medicines needed to treat widespread
infections among wounded soldiers.
Porcher's book explores plants with medicinal
properties, including 37 that could be used to treat
infections such as gangrene. Dettweiler and Quave

Quave is assembling a medical botany collection of
plants used in traditional healing practices around the
world as part of the Emory University Herbarium.

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant samples that are used
for botanical research and education. Herbarium specimens may
include pressed and mounted plants and plant parts such as seeds,
wood sections and pollen.
www.georgiamagazine.org

16-18_Civil_War_Med_Plants_0320.indd 17

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2/12/20 3:41 PM


http://www.georgiamagazine.org

Georgia Magazine - March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - March 2020

Contents
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Intro
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Cover1
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Cover2
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Contents
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 4
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 5
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 6
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 7
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 8
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 9
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 10
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 11
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 12
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 13
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 14
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 15
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 16
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 17
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 18
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 19
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 20
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 21
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 22
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 23
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 24
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 25
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 26
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 27
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 28
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 29
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 30
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 31
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Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 33
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 34
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 35
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 36
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 37
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 38
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 39
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 40
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 41
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 42
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 43
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 44
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 45
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - 46
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Cover3
Georgia Magazine - March 2020 - Cover4
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