Toxic Foxgloves and Your Heart
When I was a student in pharmacology, I remember reading about the side effects of digitalis. Digitalis is a drug that is derived from foxglove, the common garden ornamental plant. The side effects included several stages that helped a doctor to recognize when too much digitalis was given, so that the dose could be reduced to prevent killing the patient. Eventually digitalis was synthetically made, and all those stages of overdose disappeared. You either had the dose right an