Am.  Jouf.  Pharm.l 
May,  1913.  j" 
Digitalis.  Foxglove. 
227 
received  Pharmacopceial  recognition  elsewhere  as  early  as  1650. 
Concerning  the  1783  Pharmacopoeia,  Withering  says: 
From  this,  I  am  satisfied,  it  will  be  again  very  soon  rejected,  if  it  should 
continue  to  be  exhibited  in  the  unrestrained  manner  in  which  it  has  hereto- 
fore been  used  at  Edinburgh,  and  in  the  enormous  doses  in  which  it  is  now 
directed  in  London. 
Came,  in  1785,  the  monumental  work  of  206  pages,  by  William 
Withering,  M.D.,25  who,  in  the  following  passage,  gives  to  local 
empiricism  the  credit  of  having  excited  his  interest  in  this  remedy : 
In  the  year  1775,  my  opinion  was  asked  concerning  a  family  receipt  for 
the  cure  of  the  dropsy.  I  was  told  that  it  had  long  been  kept  a  secret  by  an 
old  woman  in  Shropshire,  who  had  sometimes  made  cures  after  the  more 
regular  practitioners  had  failed.  I  was  informed,  also,  that  the  effects  pro- 
duced were  violent  vomiting  and  purging ;  for  the  diuretic  effects  seemed 
to  have  been  overlooked.  This  medicine  was  composed  of  twenty  or  more 
different  herbs ;  but  it  was  not  very  difficult  for  one  conversant  in  these 
subjects,  to  perceive  that  the  active  herb  could  be  no  other  than  the  Foxglove. 
In  the  Preface  to  his  book,  Withering  states  his  reason  for  the 
effort  as  follows : 
The  use  of  the  Foxglove  is  getting  abroad,  and  it  is  better  the  world 
should  derive  some  instruction,  however  imperfect,  than  that  the  lives  of 
men  should  be  hazarded  by  its  unguarded  exhibition,  or  that  a  medicine  of 
so  much  efficacy  should  be  condemned  and  rejected  as  dangerous  and 
unmanageable. 
This  antedated  the  hypodermic  syringe  as  well  as  the  physio- 
logical experimenter,  but  yet  Withering  intrudes  on  animal  experi- 
mentation, for  he  introduces  a  description  of  the  experimental 
action  of  Digitalis  leaves  upon  a  turkey  fed  with  the  drug,  con- 
cluding as  follows : 
At  length  he  refused  all  nourishment.  On  the  fifth  or  sixth  day  the 
excrements  became  as  white  as  chalk ;  afterwards  yellow,  greenish,  and  black. 
On  the  eighteenth  day  he  died,  greatly  reduced  in  flesh,  for  he  now  weighed 
only  three  pounds. 
On  opening  him  we  found  the  heart,  the  lungs,  the  liver  and  gall-bladder 
25  An  Account  of  the  Foxglove  and  Some  of  its  Medical  Uses,  with 
Practical  Remarks  on  Dropsy  and  Other  Diseases,  by  William  Withering, 
M.D.,  Physician  to  the  General  Hospital  at  Birmingham.  Published  in 
London,  1785. 
