​ CARSON, Joseph (1808-76). An American pharmacist and medical botanist, born in Philadelphia. He graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1826, and at the Medical School of the University in 1830, and in 1836-50 was professor of materia medica in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. He held a similar chair in the University of Pennsylvania from 1850 to 1876. In 1870 he was president of the national convention for the revision of the Pharmacopœia, and for a number of years he was an associate editor of the American Journal of Pharmacy. He edited the Elements of Materia Medica of Jonathan Pereira (1843; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1845), and the Materia Medica and Therapeutics of J. Forbes Royle (1847), and published the Illustrations of Medical Botany (1847).