The Santa Fe Trail was a historic trade route that brought cayenne peppers up the Trail and sent back diseases the indigenous people had never seen. Rugged people traveled the Trail, taking along new state-of-the-art medicines, as well as discovering new plants along the way. This is a look at plant medicines that helped shape the medical treatment of soldiers during the Civil War and helped to shape our medicines of today. I've included plants found along the Trail as well as folk medicines used by Native Americans and settlers, too. Plant illustrations and how they were used are included. If you enjoy the history of folk medicine, plants or just history in general, you will probably enjoy my little book. It's from a lecture I gave at the Santa Fe Trail Symposium many years ago.