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History of the RSM

Feature of the month - May 2008
Image of a foxglove
From Withering's Account of the foxglove and some of its medical uses. 1785.

William Withering

In 1775 William Withering (1741 – 1799), a physician and botanist then practising in Birmingham, identified foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) as the active ingredient in a folk remedy containing nearly two dozen herbs.

In his 1785 work an account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses he describes the effects of administering Digitalis purpurea to more than 150 patients.

Withering has been described as “one of the greatest medical botanists … Before his time digitalis was a widely used folk remedy…but it is due to him that correct dosages were established and the action of digitalis in dropsy and on the heart became generally recognised.”

Withering was a man of wide scientific interests and was an active member of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and of the Lunar Society, an informal dining club based in Birmingham and consisting of industrialists, natural philosophers, and intellectuals. The society was so named because they met during the full moon, the extra light affording a safer journey home often across considerable distances.

In his will Sir William Osler bequeathed to the Royal Society of Medicine a collection of William Withering’s letters in the “hope that some member of the Historical Section with (sic) edit them carefully.” This hope was realised in 1928 when Sir William Hale-White, RSM President from 1922 to 1924, catalogued and classified the letters, and transcribed a selection of them. In 1986, Dr Ronald Mann published William Withering and the foxglove, a facsimile edition of the letters.

Excerp of a letter from Osler
Osler’s letter of 24th August 1918 to his friend, Dr Pratt of Boston, describing how he purchased the Withering letters.

The collection of letters is held as part of the manuscript collection in the RSM Library. Thirty of the letters were written by Withering, the first dated November 5th 1766 and sent to his parents from Paris. Other letters describe the winters of 1792/3 and 1793/4 which he spent in Portugal in the hope of alleviating the respiratory condition he then suffered. Others include letters to his son, a medical student at Glasgow and at Edinburgh, one describing a hurricane of 1795 which uprooted eight or nine large oak trees. Another letter of 1796 in which Withering observes that people are taking too much exercise and eating too little to avoid becoming fat,  and where he remarks that Christmas Day was warmer than Midsummer Day accords with some of the anxieties fashionable in our own time.

The remainder of the collection consists of letters written to Withering by other botanists and physicians, including Erasmus Darwin.

 

Bibliography

Collection of MS. letters, notes, etc., to or from William Withering M.D., F.R.S., (1741-1799) bound in one volume. 1766-1804
Royal Society of Medicine Library. Manuscript MSS.534

McGill University. Bibliotheca Osleriana: a catalogue of books illustrating the history of medicine and science collected, arranged, and annotated by Sir William Osler, Bt., and bequeathed to McGill University.
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1929

Ronald David Mann.
William Withering and the foxglove: a bicentenary selection of letters from the Osler bequest to the Royal Society of Medicine, together with a transcription of "An account of the foxglove," and an introductory essay. With the collaboration of Helen Townsend and Joanna Townsend.
Lancaster, Boston, etc., MTP, 1986

Jeffrey K. Aronson.
William Withering (1741 – 1799).
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000.
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004

Jenny Uglow.
The Lunar men: the friends who made the future 1730-1810.
London, Faber & Faber, 2002

Leslie Thomas Morton.
Morton's Medical bibliography: an annotated check-list of texts illustrating the history of medicine (Garrison and Morton). 5th edition. Edited by Jeremy M. Norman.
Aldershot, Scolar, 1991

A.R. Cushny.
William Withering, M.D., F.R.S.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 1915; 8: Section of the History of Medicine, 85-93.

Sir William Hale-White.
The Withering letters in the possession of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 1928/29; 22: Section of the History of Medicine, 1087 – 1091.

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