An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses

In 1775 a Shropshire family remedy for dropsy came to William Withering’s attention, a country recipe of some twenty herbs, and he set about working out which one was doing the work. The answer was foxglove. This 1785 treatise reports the decade of practice that followed: when to gather the leaves and how to dry them, how far a dose could safely be pushed, and how to read the warning signs, vomiting, a pulse slowed to thirty-five beats, vision turning green or yellow. Withering then lists his patients one by one, including those who got no relief and those who died. He prescribed the plant chiefly to drain fluid, while noting its power over the motion of the heart, a hint later medicine built on. Printing the failures beside the cures is what still gives the book its authority.