William Withering

William Withering was an English physician and botanist who practiced at Birmingham General Hospital in the late eighteenth century and belonged to the Lunar Society of Birmingham alongside figures such as Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley. He identified extract of foxglove, or digitalis, as an effective treatment for dropsy, the fluid retention now understood as a symptom of congestive heart failure, after learning of its use in a family herbal remedy and then testing it systematically. His 1785 book, An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses, documented 156 cases and worked out safe and effective dosing, making it an early example of medicine built on organized clinical observation rather than folk use alone.