PEDIATRIC PERCEPTIONS

[摘要] William Withering, an English physician, learned of a secret recipe for the treatment of dropsy from a woman of Shropshire in 1775. The medication was a concoction of more than 20 herbs, but Withering, who was a competent botanist, as well as an excellent physician, determined that it was the foxglove which contained See Table in the PDF file the active ingredient, digitalis, and he decided to use the leaves of the plant, not the whole recipe, on his patients.1 After ten years of clinical trials, he published his classical book, "An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses; With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases."2Withering, however, was not the first physician to use and write about digitalis. The drug is mentioned by medical writers as being used for various diseases such as epilepsy, anasarca, wounds and ulcers, and was taken both internally and applied externably, during the 13th through the 15th centuries. Gerrarde (1597) and Parkinson (1640) mention the drug being used as an expectorant and emetic.3 Although it is highly probable that children, as well as adults, were treated in those times, it was Withering who first recorded the use of digitalis in children.Withering reported the use of digitalis in 12 children with a variety of diseases, and the results are abstracted in Table I. His comments are noted as quotations to retain the flavor of his original accounts. There is also a general statement about the drug's use in children at the end of the table, and this, too, is reproduced in its original language.

[学科分类] 儿科学