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Not only is foxglove pretty, but it's also highly poisonous. Foxglove contains cardiac glycosides, a compound which increases the intensity of heart muscle contractions but diminishes the rate - and can diminish it to the point of death. Did you hear that? It stops your heart. Don't go munching on it, for heavens sake. This toxic compound is isolated by pharmaceutical producers and used to create modern heart medications like Lanoxin, used to treat congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation.
The plant was first brought to the attention of allopathic medicine by a Scottish doctor named Dr. William Withering. In 1785 he published a paper named Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medicinal Uses. Ten years before, he had been unsuccessfully treating a patient with dropsy, an old-fashioned word for edema due to heart failure. After his treatments failed to produce any improvement in the patient, the family decided to try a remedy from a local woman with a knowledge of herbs, and the patient began to recover after a concoction containing foxglove was administered. Dr. Withering was excited about the turn of events and spent several years studying and experimenting with the plant. He found that the therapeutic dose was very close to the toxic dose, and he documented which methods of preparation were most effective (I haven't found out if all of his patients survived or not). Obviously the knowledge of this plant's usefulness existed long before Withering came along, but the person who writes the paper often gets the credit.
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