I have not observed that any of our cattle eat it. The root, the stem, the leaves, and the flowers have a bitter herbaceous taste, but I don't perceive that nauseous bitter which has been attributed to it.
This plant ranks amongst the LURIDÆ, one of the Linnæan orders in a natural system. It has for congenera, Nicotiana, Atropa, Hyoscyamus, Datura, Solanum, &c. so that from the knowledge we possess of the virtues of those plants, and reasoning from botanical analogy, we might be led to guess at something of its properties.
I intended in this place to have traced the history of its effects in diseases from the time of Fuchsius, who first describes it, but I have been anticipated in this intention by my very valuable friend, Dr. Stokes of Stourbridge, who has lately sent me the following
Historical View of the Properties of Digitalis.
Fuchsius in his hist. stirp. 1542, is the first author who notices it. From him it receives its name of Digitalis, in allusion to the German name of Fingerhut, which signifies a finger-stall, from the blossoms resembling the finger of a glove.
Sensible Qualities. Leaves bitterish, very nauseous. Lewis Mat. med. i. 342.
Sensible Effects. Some persons, soon after eating of a kind of omalade, into which the leaves of this, with those of several other plants, had entered as an ingredient, found themselves much indisposed, and were presently after attacked with vomitings. Dodonæus pempt. 170.
It is a medicine which is proper only for strong constitutions, as it purges very violently, and excites excessive vomitings. Ray. hist. 767.
Boerhaave judges it to be of a poisonous nature, hist. plant. but Dr. Alston ranks it among those indigenous vegetables, "which, though now disregarded, are medicines of great virtue, and scarcely inferior to any that the Indies afford." Lewis Mat. med. i. p. 343.
Six or seven spoonfuls of the decoction produce nausea and vomiting, and purge; not without some marks of a deleterious quality. Haller hist. n. 330 from Aerial Infl. p. 49, 50.