the
virtues of those plants, and reasoning from botanical analogy, we
might be led to guess at something of its properties.

I intended in this place to have traced the history of its effects in
diseases from the time of Fuchsius, who first describes it, but I have
been anticipated in this intention by my very valuable friend, Dr.
Stokes of Stourbridge, who has lately sent me the following

HISTORICAL VIEW of the Properties of Digitalis.

FUCHSIUS in his _hist. stirp._ 1542, is the first author who notices
it. From him it receives its name of DIGITALIS, in allusion to the
German name of _Fingerhut_, which signifies a finger-stall, from the
blossoms resembling the finger of a glove.

SENSIBLE QUALITIES. Leaves bitterish, very nauseous. LEWIS _Mat. med._
i. 342.

SENSIBLE EFFECTS. Some persons, soon after eating of a kind of
omalade, into which the leaves of this, with those of several other
plants, had entered as an ingredient, found themselves much
indisposed, and were presently after attacked with vomitings. DODONAEUS
_pempt._ 170.

It is a medicine which is proper only for strong constitutions, as it
purges very violently, and excites excessive vomitings. RAY. _hist._
767.

BOERHAAVE judges it to be of a poisonous nature, _hist. plant._ but
DR. ALSTON ranks it among those indigenous vegetables, "which, though
now disregarded, are medicines of great virtue, and scarcely inferior
to any that the Indies afford." LEWIS _Mat. med._ i. _p._ 343.

Six or seven spoonfuls of the decoction produce nausea and vomiting,
and purge; not without some marks of a deleterious quality. HALLER
_hist. n._ 330 from _Aerial Infl. p._ 49, 50.

The following is an abridged ACCOUNT
of its EFFECTS upon TURKEYS.

M. SALERNE, a physician at Orleans, having heard that several turkey
pouts had been killed by being fed with Foxglove leaves, instead of
mullein, he gave some of the same leaves to a large vigorous turkey.
The bird was so much affected that he could not stand upon his legs,
he appeared drunk, and his excrements became reddish. Good nourishment
restored him to health in eight days.

Being then determined to push the experiment further, he chopped some
more leaves, mixed them with bran, and gave them to a vigorous turkey
cock which weighed seven pounds. This bird soon appeared drooping and
melancholy; his feathers stared, his neck became pale and retracted.
The leaves w