Withering was born in Wellington, Shropshire, trained as a physician and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. 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 recognising 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's effects and toxicity.
It combines withering portraits of Facebook’s insular, callous leadership with harrowing details of what Wynn-Williams calls the company’s “lethal carelessness” on the global stage ... as Wynn-Williams.
