20 Facts About William Withering

William Withering FRS was an English botanist, geologist, chemist, physician and first systematic investigator of the bioactivity of digitalis.

William Withering trained as a physician and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.

The story is that he noticed a person with dropsy improve remarkably after taking a traditional herbal remedy; William Withering became famous for recognising that the active ingredient in the mixture came from the foxglove plant.

In 1785, William Withering published An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses, which contained reports on clinical trials and notes on digitalis's effects and toxicity.

William Withering married Helena Cookes in 1772; they had three children.

William Withering was one of the members of the Lunar Society.

William Withering explained on the title page and his introduction that he avoided being explicit to allow his book to be used without any problems by a wider audience and in particular women.

William Withering senior carried out pioneering work into the identification of fungi and invented a folding pocket microscope for use on botanical field trips.

William Withering introduced to the general audience the screw down plant press and the vasculum.

Allegedly, William Withering first learned of the use of digitalis in treating "dropsy" from "Mother Hutton", an old woman who practised as a folk herbalist in Shropshire, who used the plant as part of a polyherbal formulation containing over 20 different ingredients to successfully treat this condition.

William Withering deduced that digitalis was the active ingredient in the formulation, and over the ensuing nine years he carefully tried out different preparations of various parts of the plant documenting 156 cases where he had employed digitalis, and describing the effects and the best - and safest - way of using it.

William Withering was in fact informed of the Brasenose College, Oxford case by one of his medical colleagues Dr Ash at Birmingham Hospital and the Dean was treated with digitalis root not leaves.

The myth of Mother Hutton and how William Withering chased her around Shropshire has been created by authors not going back to primary sources but instead copying and then embellishing the unreferenced work of others.

William Withering had first published his Botanical Arrangement in 1776 and in it suggested foxglove deserved looking at in more detail.

Charles Darwin in fact had been friendly with William Withering and had talked in Edinburgh University about William Withering's experiments with foxglove.

Erasmus Darwin was probably jealous that William Withering had become the most famous and sought-after doctor outside London and that William Withering's English Botanical Arrangement became the standard reference source and far exceeded the botanical publications of Erasmus in popularity.

William Withering conducted a series of experiments on Terra Ponderosa, a heavy ore from Cumberland, England.

William Withering deduced that it contained a hitherto undescribed element which he was unable to characterise.

William Withering undertook analyses of the mineral content of a number of spa waters in England and abroad, notably at the medicinal spa at Caldas da Rainha in Portugal.

William Withering is remembered by one of the Lunar Society Moonstones in Birmingham and by a blue plaque at Edgbaston Hall.