128 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



over-ripe leaves, of any year. The standard of excel- 

 lence should be the fully-matured, air-dried leaf, regard- 

 less of the age of the plant, and we question if collectors 

 anywhere discriminate concerning the age of the plant. 

 In this connection we would state that, originally, both 

 the root and the leaf of digitalis were employed in medi- 

 cine. The root, however, is" exceedingly variable in 

 structure, that of the first year's growth being insignifi- 

 cant and sappy, whilst the root of the second year's 

 growth is larger and heavier, and more pronounced in 

 quality. Inasmuch as the leaf possesses fully the qual- 

 ities of the drug, and is more easily collected, it nat- 

 urally displaced the root in medicine. The preference 

 once given to the second year's growth of the root, 

 created both the confusion and the prejudice whereby 

 the leaf of the first year was finally ostracized, even in 

 authoritative literature. Thus both Pharmacopeias 

 and standard works on materia medica were illogically 

 led to exclude much excellent digitalis material. In 

 searching for data in this direction, we find that Wither- 

 ing, Physician to the General Hospital at Birmingham, 

 in 1785, writes as follows, in his "An Account of the 

 Foxglove" (693): 



"My truly valuable and respectable friend, Dr. Ash, 

 informed me that Dr. Cawley, then principal of Brazen 

 Nose College, Oxford, had been cured of a Hydrops 

 Pectoris by an empirical exhibition of the root of the Fox- 

 glove, after some of the first physicians of the age had 

 declared they could do no more for him. I was now 

 determined to pursue my former idea more vigorously 

 than before, but was too well aware of the uncertainty 

 which must attend on the exhibition of the root of a 



