An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses, with Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases (Dodo Press)

William Withering (1741-1799) was an English botanist, geologist, chemist, physician and the discoverer of digitalis. In 1776, he published The Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain, an early and influential British Flora. It was the first in English based on the then new Linnaean taxonomy - a classification of all living things - devised by the eminent Swedish botanist and physician Carolus Linnaeus (1707- 1778). In 1785 he was elected a Fellow of the very prestigious Royal Society and also published his An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses, With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases. In 1787 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society in recognition of his contribution to botany. Subsequently the plant Witheringia solanacea was named in his honour, and he became known on the continent of Europe as "The English Linnaeus". He also conducted a series of experiments on Terra Ponderosa, a heavy ore from Cumberland, England. It was later shown to be barium carbonate and in 1789 the eminent German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner named the mineral Witherite in his honour.