Medical shortages and Confederate medicine: a retrospective evaluation.

The Union's decision to treat medicines and medical supplies as contraband of war meant, for the Confederacy, the specter of medical shortages. The Confederate medical department significantly lessened the subsequent suffering through an energetic and resourceful program to supply its physicians' needs. Medicines and medical supplies were purchased abroad and smuggled through the Union blockade, obtained in an illicit trade with the North, captured from the enemy, and manufactured in the Confederacy. The search for home remedies, enthusiastically endorsed by Surgeon General Samuel P. Moore, was one of the most prominent features of the southern program. This paper surveys and analyzes medical shortages and Confederate medicine.