Details
[CONFEDERATE IMPRINT]. PORCHER, Francis Peyre (1825-1895). Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medical, Economical, and Agricultural. Being also A Medical Botany of the Confederate States. Richmond, Virginia: West and Johnston, 1863.
8o (222 x 141 mm). Contemporary marbled boards (rebacked in calf to match original spine, new black leather spine label, some browning and foxing to text). Provenance: C.B. Bryan (two contemporary ownership inscriptions, one dated 1863, on front endpaper).
FIRST EDITION, the Richmond imprint issue (far rarer than the Charleston, South Carolina imprint), of what has been termed "the most ambitious and important work produced in the Confederacy" (In Tall Cotton). "The only Confederate manual of materia medica, and the first extensive treatise on the botany of the Southern states. Porcher [a South Carolina physician] served as a field and hospital surgeon for the Confederate Army until, by order of the Surgeon General, he was temporarily released to compile the present work, made necessary by the Union blockade of Southern ports which severely restricted the import of foreign drugs and other medical supplies. The work was in effect an early type of survival manual, offering information on how to live off the land" (Norman). Crandall 3042; Cornerstones of Confederate Collecting 10, Confederate Hundred 69, In Tall Cotton 150 (all Charleston imprint); Garrison-Morton 1865.1; Parrish & Willingham 6133; Norman 1722.
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FIRST EDITION, the Richmond imprint issue (far rarer than the Charleston, South Carolina imprint), of what has been termed "the most ambitious and important work produced in the Confederacy" (In Tall Cotton). "The only Confederate manual of materia medica, and the first extensive treatise on the botany of the Southern states. Porcher [a South Carolina physician] served as a field and hospital surgeon for the Confederate Army until, by order of the Surgeon General, he was temporarily released to compile the present work, made necessary by the Union blockade of Southern ports which severely restricted the import of foreign drugs and other medical supplies. The work was in effect an early type of survival manual, offering information on how to live off the land" (Norman). Crandall 3042; Cornerstones of Confederate Collecting 10, Confederate Hundred 69, In Tall Cotton 150 (all Charleston imprint); Garrison-Morton 1865.1; Parrish & Willingham 6133; Norman 1722.