Digitalis purpurea
Made from the purple foxglove — the cottage-garden flower that gave medicine digoxin, two centuries of heart treatment, and the precise toxicology of the slow pulse.
The whole picture, in one breath
Think of a heart beating too slowly and too weakly: a pulse that flags and intermits, a sensation as if the heart would stop if it moved, nausea rising with every cardiac jolt, dropsy with scanty urine, and a bluish dread. The slow, irregular, nauseated heart: that is Digitalis.
The substance, in plain words
The foxglove is the tall biennial of cottage gardens whose leaves carry cardiac glycosides — above all digoxin, the drug that transformed dropsy and heart failure after Withering's 1785 account. The remedy's portrait and the drug's toxicology are the same text: slow pulse, nausea, yellow vision.
The traditional picture Classical sources
The inner state
- Anxious dread of the heart. Fear the heart will stop; worry, worse alone; the books note the anxious cardiac temperament.
- Irritability. Cross, worse from contradiction, in the digitalis states.
- Despondency. Gloomy foreboding with the weak circulation.
The body
- Slow irregular pulse. The keynote: pulse slow, feeble, irregular, intermitting — the digitalis signature.
- Heart stands still on moving. The sensation that the heart would stop with the least motion; must keep still.
- Nausea with the heart. Stomach symptoms ride with the cardiac ones — nausea, vomiting, faintness.
- Dropsy with scanty urine. Fluid retention with diminished urine output — the old dropsy Withering treated.
- Blueness and chill. Cyanosis, cold limbs, with the failing action.
- Worse motion and sitting erect. Any motion aggravates; the books note the paradoxical aggravation from sitting upright.
Modalities (worse and better factors)
| Worse from ⬇ | Better from ⬇ |
|---|---|
| motion; sitting erect; warm food; exertion. | lying still; open air; rest. |
Where it acts (organ affinities)
Heart muscle, circulation, kidneys and urine, digestive tract.
Where the classical picture comes from
Foxglove poisoning was described long before Withering — country people knew the fairy-fingers were dangerous; the drug and the remedy both descend from the same toxicology: the slow pulse, the nausea, the dropsy relieved by urine.
The substance in real medicine Pharmacology
What this section is: the pharmacology and toxicology of the source substance. It is not clinical evidence that a homeopathic preparation of it treats any condition. What controlled trials do and do not show is set out on the Evidence page.
Digoxin is one of medicine's great drugs — still used for atrial fibrillation and heart failure after two centuries, with a therapeutic window so narrow that blood-level monitoring is routine. Digitalis toxicity — yellow-green vision, nausea, slow pulse — remains a live clinical skill. No remedy in this library sits closer to the beating heart of real medicine.
Look-alikes (how the classical authors told it apart)
| Remedy | Looks similar because… | Tells it apart because… |
|---|---|---|
| Crataegus oxyacantha | Failing heart | Crataegus is the gently tiring heart; Digitalis the slow, intermitting, nauseated one. |
| Cactus grandiflorus | Constriction of the heart | Cactus is the iron band; Digitalis the slow pump. |
| Laurocerasus | Heart and respiration | Laurocerasus is the gasping cyanotic spasm; Digitalis the feeble slow beat. |
| Strophanthus hispidus | Rapid weak heart | Strophanthus is the rapid, irregular, exhausting beat; Digitalis the slow one. |