# Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

**Digitalis*, “finger-stall”*

**Known today as.** *Digitalis purpurea*.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Cardiac glycoside poisoning (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/cardiac-glycoside)  
Deadly: yes

> **Deadly.** Every part is poisonous to the heart.

## What was it used for?

A violent purge and vomit in folk practice, used for dropsy and scrofula.

## What does modern science say?

The source of digitalis and digoxin, which strengthen and slow the failing heart. William Withering’s *Account of the Foxglove* (1785) is a landmark of clinical pharmacology. Digoxin, isolated in 1930 from *Digitalis lanata*, is still prescribed for heart failure and atrial fibrillation, though less than it was; its dose lies close to its poison, and the nausea, yellow vision, and slowed heart of overdose are what Withering described. The plant has killed people who mistook its leaves for comfrey.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **digitoxin**: the chief glycoside of *D. purpurea*
- **digoxin**: from *D. lanata*
- **gitoxin**: 

**Mechanism.** The glycosides block the sodium-potassium pump of the heart cell, strengthening contraction and slowing conduction.

**Dose.** The therapeutic and toxic doses of digoxin lie within a factor of two; a few leaves of the plant are dangerous.

**Standing.** Digoxin is on the WHO list of essential medicines, for heart failure and atrial fibrillation.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its English name is “folk’s glove,” the glove of the fairies, by one account; the Norwegians call it *revbjelde*, fox-bell. Withering’s informant was an old woman of Shropshire whose family receipt of some twenty herbs he reduced to the one that worked. Dr Gachet, who treated Van Gogh in 1890, is painted holding a foxglove, and the painter’s yellow haloes have been blamed, without proof, on digitalis.

## What did the older authorities say?

**William Withering.** Learned of it from a Shropshire family receipt for dropsy, and over ten years worked out its dose and its danger.

**Leonhart Fuchs.** Named it *Digitalis* in his herbal of 1542, from the German *Fingerhut*, thimble, and gave it as a purge and for dropsy.

**The Welsh physicians.** The Physicians of Myddfai used foxglove outwardly in the thirteenth century, and in English folk medicine it was the great, dangerous remedy of the wise women for the dropsy.

## Sources

- Withering, W. (1785). *An Account of the Foxglove*.
- Withering, W. (1785). *An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses*.
- Fuchs, L. (1542). *De historia stirpium*.
- Withering, W. (1785). *An Account of the Foxglove*.

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*Foxglove.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/foxglove

Historical description, not medical advice.