Historical Nonfiction

In 1775 in England, Dr. William Withering was treating an elderly woman for dropsy (congestive heart failure), which causes a severe swelling of the lower limbs. He had nothing to give the woman, and was certain she would soon die. Imagine his surprise when a few weeks later he heard she had made a full recovery! She said it was due to her neighbor’s herbal tea. Withering asked for the recipe, and the doctor realized that it included an old recipe for dropsy that dated to the Middle Ages: the foxglove plant. He began to experiment, and found that extracts of the pretty flower helped cure the swelling. Today, digitalis is the drug commonly proscribed for dropsy, and the foxglove plant and its relatives are still the basic ingredient.