65: Cardioactive Steroids

The Ebers Papyrus provides evidence that the Egyptians used plants containing cardioactive steroids (CASs) at least 3000 years ago. However, it was not until 1785, when William Withering wrote the first systemic account about the effects of the foxglove plant, that the use of CASs was more widely accepted into the Western apothecary. Foxglove, the most common source of plant CAS, was initially used as a diuretic and for the treatment of “dropsy” (edema), and Withering eloquently described its “power over the motion of the heart, to a degree yet unobserved in any other medicine.”