{"id":330,"date":"2005-05-02T07:19:04","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T13:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/2005\/05\/02\/notes-from-the-john-martin-rare-book-room-12\/"},"modified":"2005-05-02T07:19:04","modified_gmt":"2005-05-02T13:19:04","slug":"notes-from-the-john-martin-rare-book-room-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/2005\/05\/02\/notes-from-the-john-martin-rare-book-room-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Withering Glance at Foxglove<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Withering, William (1741-1799).<em> An Account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses<\/em>, Birmingham, 1785.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/files\/2007\/04\/witheringfoxglovesm21.jpg\" alt=\"Withering, William (1741-1799). An Account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses, Birmingham, 1785.\" class=\"imgborder\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" \/>William Withering was a keen observer of plants and their medicinal uses and had already published a widely respected and comprehensive treatise on \u201c<em>Botanical Arrangement of all the vegetables<\/em>\u201d when this, his most famous work was printed.  A graduate of the University of Edinburgh and later appointed an early physician to General Hospital, he noted the success of a complex herbal folk recipe in the treatment of \u201cdropsy\u201d (cardiac edema).   Withering isolated the active component as the dried leaf of the foxglove (<em>Digitalis purpura<\/em>) which had been used indiscriminately (mostly as a diuretic) for centuries.  It was Withering\u2019s careful documentation and analysis of his many cases together with his instructions for preparation and dosage that introduced digitalis as a safe drug for a specific purpose. The book was written not only as a directive but as warning against the over-use of the drug which, of course, remains in use today.  The exquisite hand-colored illustration of the foxglove plant included in this copy is in near mint condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Withering Glance at Foxglove Withering, William (1741-1799). An Account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses, Birmingham, 1785. William Withering was a keen observer of plants and their medicinal uses and had already published a widely respected and comprehensive treatise on \u201cBotanical Arrangement of all the vegetables\u201d when this, his most famous<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/2005\/05\/02\/notes-from-the-john-martin-rare-book-room-12\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/hardin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}