. A history of the vegetable kingdom; embracing the physiology of plants, with their uses to man and the lower animals, and their application in the arts, manufactures, and domestic economy. Illus. by several hundred figures. Botany; Botany, Economic; 1855. 654 HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. dom from pain; nor haa it a tendency to con- stipate the bowels, but has rather an opening effect. Foxglove (digitalis purpurea). Natural family solancce; didi/namia, angiospermia, of. Digitalia. Linnaeus. This plant, well known by its beau- tiful pyramidal spike of bell-shaped flowers, grows commonly a
. A history of the vegetable kingdom; embracing the physiology of plants, with their uses to man and the lower animals, and their application in the arts, manufactures, and domestic economy. Illus. by several hundred figures. Botany; Botany, Economic; 1855. 654 HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. dom from pain; nor haa it a tendency to con- stipate the bowels, but has rather an opening effect. Foxglove (digitalis purpurea). Natural family solancce; didi/namia, angiospermia, of. Digitalia. Linnaeus. This plant, well known by its beau- tiful pyramidal spike of bell-shaped flowers, grows commonly about road sides, hedges, rocks, and quarries, in dry gravelly soils. The root is biennial, the stalk erect, simple, and tapering. The leaves are large, oval, obtusely serrated on the edges, downy, and stand on short footstalks. The flowers grow on a long terminal spike, chiefly on one side: they are large, monopetalous, pendulous, and bell-shaped; purple in one variety, white in another. The capsule is bilocular, and contains many blackish seeds. The flowers appear in June and July. The leaves are the medicinal parts of the plant. They have little smell, but a bitter, nauseous taste. In large doses they produce the usual effects of a poisonous narcotic, as vomiting, purging, dimness of sight, giddiness, and delirium, followed by death; in moderate and regulated doses, their medicinal effects are: to diminish the frequency of the pulse, and the irritability of the system; to increase the action of the absor- bents, and the action of the urinary organs. Ray, and the earlier English physicians, were acquainted with many of the effects of this plant; but Withering first discovered its diuretic properties. For some time digitalis was in great vogue for the cure of dropsy and consumption; but being used indiscriminately in all kinds of these complaints, it of course was found to fail in very many cases, and thus suffered a diminu- tion of its high reputation. It is still, however, re
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