Tag Archives: medical history

From folklore to botany to medicine to art Botany may be considered the predecessor of modern pharmacopoeia: in antiquity, a number of plants served as therapeutic remedies.1 The earliest use of foxglove can be traced back to the Greek and Roman eras, based on reports that the ‘father of pharmacognosy,’ Pedanius Dioscorides, was aware of its effects.2 In Welsh and Irish folklore, foxglove was considered to protect against the evil eye and witchcraft.3 The first detailed account of the medicinal use of foxglove took place in the sixteenth century when Leonhard Fuchs (1501–1566) suggested that it may have diuretic properties when taken or

Two, completely unrelated events prompted me to put pen to paper on this occasion (just in case you were under the impression that this column was simply the result of random neuronal discharges). The first was yet another news item about any individual’s medical details and the idea that these are best retained by the patient him/herself. Perhaps with credit card-type technology, or in the future on an implanted computer chip, stored information could be available for any doctor–patient interaction – anywhere in the world – in order to be viewed and updated as appropriate. The second was a 1969 film I recently chanced upon, based on