Witches Brew Metal Sign Warning Large 2

He was a physician in rural England, who went from town to town with his bag of medications visiting his sick patients. One day, while he was changing horses in a town, a man came to him with his wife as he explained of his wife’s illness. Dr. Withering went to see the woman and discovered she had dropsy. Unfortunately, as there was no cure for it at that time and it was fatal, so he  sent them on their way.

A few weeks later, this same man approached Withering as he passed through town again and told him of the amazing recovery his wife had made with someone else. Withering went to see the woman and asked what she had taken. She told a “witches brew” had been prescribed for her by the gypsies. She followed along with the chants, the rituals and drank the brew, and got better.  By the 1700’s Christianity had wiped out any witches line but the roaving gypsies kept some of the lore and any people out of the way of mainstream cities.

Dr. Withering hunted down the gypsy group to learn what exactly helped his patient because as a doctor of the times, he was trained as a botanist.  Long story short, it turns out,that the ingredient in her potion that helped her was purple foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). He then tested different formulations and preparations of the foxglove in varying dosages in hundreds of patients he concluded that it was of a great benefit as long as it was carefully titrated to avoid the toxicities of overly slow pulse and vomiting.   He found out the eye of newt and the rest of the ingredients didnt help that particular disease but werent harmful.