stemming from Withering’s work, a post-Withering acquisition from learned
medicine seems more probable. The very scattered distribution of the folk
records traced, in Britain and Ireland alike, lends support to that (just
Devon,^149 Shropshire^150 and the Scottish lowlands^151 as far as the British ones
are concerned). As a diuretic, though, valued for dropsy or gravel, the plant’s
credentials as a folk medicine of much longer standing are more convincing,
with British records from Oxfordshire,^152 Shropshire,^153 Yo rkshire^154 and the
Highlands.^155
Inthe later herbals, foxglove is recommended as a remedy for tuberculosis
pre-eminently, but of its use for that in folk medicine only a single record (an
Irish one) has been discovered. The herbals also make much mention of its
value for the tubercular condition of the glands known as scrofula, but folk
recordsofthat, too, are no less conspicuous by their absence. Instead, the plant
seems to have served for the most part as an all-purpose salve: for bruises, espe-
cially when festering, in the Isle of Man,^156 to bring boils to ahead there, too,^157
and in the Highlands^158 for skin complaints of various kinds as well as in the
Isle of Man^159 and Devon,^160 for cuts and wounds in Montgomeryshire,^161 for
lumps and swellings in Inverness-shire^162 and for burns and scalds in Eriskay
in the Outer Hebrides.^163 InGloucestershire within living memory, large fox-
glove leaves have been placed on the breasts to dry up milk at weaning.^164
A further quite widespread use—though much less in evidence in Britain
(Kent (?),^165 Fife^166 )—has been for colds, sore throats and fevers. This was the
standard function of foxglove tea, though a broth sometimes took the place
of that. Some of the sore throats, however, may really have been diphtheria,
cases of which in Inverness-shire are known to have been treated with a hot
poultice (made from the pulped roots) placed on the neck—a treatment
reserved there, too, for ‘bad knees’ (presumably rheumatism).^167 In the days
when fever victims were assailed with purges and emetics a decoction of the
foxglove, notorious for the violence of its effects, was found in use for this
purpose in the Somerset Levels in the sixteenth century by Matthias de l’O-
bel^168 and still persisted in that county and Devon nearly three centuries
later.^169 To remove pains following a fever, the inhabitants of Skye also at one
time found a foxglove poultice useful.^170 But it was presumably because it
was seen as dangerous to expose children to its properties too directly that the
preferred treatment for those suffering from scarlet fever, at least in Shrop-
shire, was for them to wear the leaves in their shoes for a year.^171
The compounds which this plant contains not only affect the heart but
can powerfully influence the nervous system, too. In Derbyshire, according to
256 Digitalis purpurea