The Confederate medical laboratories

During the Civil War, the scarcity and expense of imported drugs forced the Confederate Army to establish several medical laboratories to manufacture drugs for military use. The laboratories produced medicines from indigenous plants and also made non-plant-based drugs. The Confederate Surgeon General and the Chief Purveyor in Richmond, VA, coordinated activities of most of the laboratories. The laboratories employed talented and resourceful personnel and manufactured a large volume and wide variety of drugs, the most useful of which included ether, chloroform, and opiates. The pharmaceutical quality of the laboratories' output was evidently uneven. Empirical testing in military hospitals helped determine the clinical value of indigenous remedies. The Confederate medical laboratories participated in a coordinated effort to supply the Army with substitutes for drugs whose availability was curtailed or uncertain.