Foxglove had been known and used in medicine for centuries. Leonard Fuchs, one of the fathers of botany, named the plant Digitalis in his famous book De Historia Stirpium in 1542 and recommended it for the treatment of dropsy. The English term “foxglove” may bear some allusion to Fuchs of Tübingen. William Withering, an English physician, was aware of Fuchs’ work and encountered the plant again when he met an “old woman” in Shropshire who used the foxglove as one component of her medicine for the dropsy. Withering placed Digitalis on a proper scientific footing and thereby eliminated much of its folklore and superstition. In the first half of the twentieth century, the structure of the ingredients of the digitalis plants was elucidated and in the second their mechanism of action. The pure substances (digoxin, digitoxin) opened new possibilities in the treatment of heart failure.