MUSC's Porcher Medicinal Garden

Francis Peyre Porcher was born in Charleston, South Carolina on December 14th 1824. After graduating from the Medical College state of South Carolina in 1847, Porcher entered private practice and taught materia medica and therapeutics at the Medical College. Resources of the Southern Fields and Forest (1863) written by Dr. Francis P. Porcher was commissioned by the surgeon general of the Confederacy Dr. Samuel Preston Moore, also a graduate of the Medical College, who wanted to identify substitutes for the manufacture drugs that were unavailable because the Union blockade of southern ports and lack of southern pharmaceutical laboratories. All the plants found in the Porcher Medicinal Garden appear in Dr Porcher's work, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests. Next to each plant is a sign detailing the plant's scientific name, its common name, its description and habitat, and its nineteenth-century therapeutic uses. "From an inspection of the large amount of material embraced in this volume, it will be seen that our Southern Flora is extraordinarily rich." -- Francis Peyre Porcher