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GREAT MEN OF MEDICINE SILVER MEDAL - W WITHERING
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GREAT MEN OF MEDICINE SILVER MEDAL - W WITHERING
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GREAT MEN OF MEDICINE SILVER MEDAL - WILLIAM WITHERING OBV: WILLIAM WITHERING DISCOVERER OF DIGITALIS 1741 1799 (HIGH RELIEF OF BUST) REV: DIGITALIS PURPUREA FOX GLOVE (HIGH RELIEF OF HEART and FOX GLOVE PLANT) HIGH RELIEF SILVER MEDAL from GREAT MEN OF MEDICINE SERIES minted by the PRESIDENTIAL ART MEDAL CO. 379 STRUCK Marked "Medallic Art Co. N.Y. .999+ Pure Silver". MEASUREMENTS: Approx. 1-3/4". WEIGHT: 2.25 troy oz. CONDITION: Excellent. RARE and HARD TO FIND. BEAUTIFUL WORK OF MEDICAL ART. Great Men of Medicine Medals An extensive collection of silver and bronze medals depicting and honoring great figures in medicine. The medals were created by Abram Belskie, a London native and a former medical sculptor for the New York Medical College. William Withering (17 March 1741 – 6 October 1799) was an English botanist, geologist, chemist, physician and the discoverer of digitalis. Withering was born in Wellington, Shropshire, trained as a physician and studied at the University of Edinburgh. He worked at Birmingham General Hospital from 1779. The story is that he noticed a person with dropsy (swelling from congestive heart failure) improve remarkably after taking a traditional herbal remedy; Withering became famous for recognizing that the active ingredient in the mixture came from the foxglove plant. The active ingredient is now known as digitalis, after the plant's scientific name. In 1785, Withering published An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses , which contained reports on clinical trials and notes on digitalis effects and toxicity. Biography Born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, he attended Edinburgh Medical School from 1762 to 1766. In 1767 he started as a consultant at Stafford Royal Infirmary. He married Helena Cookes (an amateur botanical illustrator, and erstwhile patient of his) in 1772; they had three children (the first, Helena was born in 1775 but died a few days later, William was born in 1776, and Charlotte in 1778). In 1775 he was appointed physician to Birmingham General Hospital (at the suggestion of Erasmus Darwin, a physician and founder member of the Lunar Society), but in 1783 he diagnosed himself as having pulmonary tuberculosis and went twice to Portugal hoping the better winter climate would improve his health; it didn't. On the way home from his second trip t, the ship he was in was chased by pirates. In 1785 he was elected a Fellow of the very prestigious Royal Society and also published his Account of the Foxglove (see below). The following year he leased Edgbaston Hall (now home to a golf club and nature reserve), in Birmingham, England. He was one of the members of the Lunar Society. During the Birmingham riots of 1791 (in which Priestley's home was demolished) he prepared to flee from Edgbaston Hall, but his staff kept the rioters at bay until the military arrived. In 1799 he decided that he couldn't tolerate another winter in the cold and draughty Edgbaston Hall, so bought "The Larches" in the nearby Sparkbrook area; his wife did not feel up to the move and remained at Edgbaston Hall. Tragically, after moving to The Larches on 28 September, he died on 6 October 1799. Botany In 1776, he published The botanical arrangement of all the vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain , an early and influential British Flora. It was the first in English based on the then new Linnaean taxonomy — a classification of all living things — devised by the eminent Swedish botanist and physician Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778). Withering wrote two more editions of this work in 1787 and 1792, in collaboration with fellow Lunar Society member Jonathan Stokes, and after his death his son (also William) published four more. It continued being published under various authors until 1877. Withering senior also carried out pioneering work into the identification of fungi and invented a folding pocket microscope for use on botanic...
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