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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thats in the exhibition too.

A close up photo of the exhibition's foxglove bells, made from natural wool felt. A needle felted bee is poking its head into one of them.

Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Digoxin was isolated in 1930 by chemist Sydney Smith working for pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome. It came from Digitalis lanata (woolly foxglove) rather than the common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) used by William Withering. Of course, all of our exhibition's felt foxgloves are woolly!

A photo of a blue medicine box from the Thackray Museum collection. It is labelled "Digoxin (a glucoside of Digitalis lanata)" and is produced by the Burroughs Wellcome company.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Mackenzie's 1911 paper 'Digitalis' in the journal Heart proved the value of foxglove medication. It has been in widespread use ever since. At its height in the 20th century, around 80% of heart failure patients in the UK were prescribed digoxin.

A photo of a small glass vial of clear liquid. It is labelled "Digoxin".

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

James Mackenzie, the Scottish cardiologist who invented the polygraph, used it to demonstrate which kinds of irregular pulse were signs of dangerous heart problems. He was also able to demonstrate with the polygraph how effectively digitalis managed these arrhythmias.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Given all these myths, perhaps it's fitting that the effectiveness of digitalis needed to be proved with a polygraph test. Long before it was part of dubious 'lie detector' technology, the original polygraph was used to detect irregular heart rhythms by drawing them in ink on long rolls of paper.

A photo of a Mackenzie-Lewis polygraph from the Thackray Museum of Medicine collection. It is a metal device in a wooden box. The device consists of receivers that attach to a person's jugular vein and radial artery, connected to a clockwork paper drive which unfurls the paper as a stylus draws inputs from the receiver onto it.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

But it's another piece of foxglove myth making. The sunflowers were painted in 1888, before Van Gogh was in Gachet's care in 1890. Xanthopsia also dulls your sense of blue, which does not fit with Van Gogh's work at this time. It is also only a side effect at virtually fatal doses of digitalis.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It is a neat and appealing story, used by Gadsby to argue that care makes more great art rather than tortured genius. And that, therefore, it's probably worth taking your meds. (Never mind that foxgloves would do nothing for Van Gogh's seizures and had toxic side effects).

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A theory - popularised by Hannah Gadsby in their stand-up special Nanette - suggests that a side effect of foxglove poisoning called xanthopsia (perceiving yellow more vividly) was responsible for the bright yellows of the artist's sunflower paintings.

A still from Hannah Gadsby's 2017 Netflix stand-up show Nanette. Gadsby is saying "So perhaps we have the sunflowers precisely because Van Gogh medicated."

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It has been argued that Van Gogh painted Gachet with foxgloves because the doctor was using the plant to treat him, presumably for his seizures. As we have seen, foxglove was a traditional - albeit useless - treatment for epilepsy. Although we don't actually know for sure whether Van Gogh used it.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Dr Paul Gachet, a homeopathic physician and amateur painter, treated Van Gogh after the artist was released from the asylum to which he had committed himself after the mental breakdown in which he had sliced off his own ear. During this period of recovery, Van Gogh proved very productive.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It still took a while after Withering, though, for foxglove to be predominantly a heart medication. And for other traditional - and largely ineffective - uses to fall from favour. Just look at the most famous foxglove in art: Van Gogh's Dr Gachet (once the most expensive painting in the world).

Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet. The doctor is shown looking sympathetically towards us, leaning on his right arm. A stack of yellow books and a vase of foxgloves sit on the table in front of him.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Our exhibition aims to show the medical truths in herbal folklore. Could that also include big pharma-authored myths of the recent past? While there was never a Mother Hutton, we do know that Withering did rely on herbal remedies from unnamed cunning folk in determining foxgloves could treat dropsy

A close up photo of the exhibition's sculptural foxgloves, with more in tge background. An identifying label is tied to the flower's stem. It says: "Foxglove. 'Goblin gloves'. Makes weak hearts pump faster."

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Mother Hutton was invented in the 1920s as a marketing gimmick by the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company wanting to flog the 'natural' origins of their product. And now her story is widely repeated as a part of real medical history.

A photo of a small box of foxglove leaves on display in the exhibition. It is a sample of 'materia medica', produced in the late 19th or early 20th century for educational purposes. The label has "FOXGLOVE" in large capitals and the scientific name 'Digitalis purpurea' in smaller text beneath. At the bottom of the box it says "Parke, Davis & Co., Manufacturing Chemists, Detroit, Michigan, USA".

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's a good story that chimes with ideas of the value of traditional herbal folk knowledge, maybe even of patriarchal control of medical knowledge robbing women of the recognition they are due. There's just one problem: There never was such a person as Old Mother Hutton.

A photo of a giant graphic illustration of a foxglove on the exhibition's green wall, accompanied by the exhibition credits.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The tea was the invention of a Shropshire cunning woman named Old Mother Hutton. For an exchange of gold sovereigns, Mother Hutton sold Withering the recipe and he made his fortune.

An illustration of William Withering and Mother Hutton by 1920s American magazine illustrator William Meade Prince. Hutton is shown as a frail elderly woman in humble country clothing, seated with a cane, holding the recipe on paper as Withering, more smartly attired and bowing, reaches out to take it.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It was not until 1785 and the publication of 'An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses' by botanist and physician William Withering that its value for regulating heart rhythms began to be understood.

A photo of a 20th century reprint of William Withering's 1785 'Account of the Foxglove'. A crimson leather cover is embossed with a gold-coloured illustration of the foxglove plant.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Their traditional usage amongst physicians and apothecaries feels barely less magical than stories connecting the plant to fairies. Nicholas Culpeper's 1652 'Complete Herbal' recommended it for "king's evil" (scrofula) and "the falling sickness" (epilepsy). Modern medicine wouldn't recommend either.

A detail from an interpretation label in the exhibition showing an illustration of the foxglove from a 1700s herbal.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The exhibition suggests various folklore behind the plant known as a fingerhat (digitalis, the scientific name, is from the Latin for finger). Perhaps they were worn by foxes to muffle their footsteps when stalking their prey, or by fairies (a folk etymology has the name as "folks' gloves").

A photo of a museum display on healing plants. Green panels have the name and illustration of a plant on one side and can be spun to reveal its story on the other. The image shows the front side of the panel for willow and the back of foxglove. The foxglove text reads: "A deadly plant that is powerful in cunning hands. It is said that fairies leave behind white spots inside the flowers to warn us that these plants are poisonous. Use it to strengthen heartbeats, give a stronger pulse, and pump blood to swollen hands."

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A fairy's hat or a fox's slipper: If our Where Magic Grows exhibition has a star then it's the foxglove. Perhaps one of the better known examples of a herbal ingredient with a clear link to a modern pharmaceutical usage, digoxin - a heart medication - comes from foxglove leaves.

A photo of a museum gallery. Two large foxglove plants, the height of a person, made from metal tubing and purple felt flowers stand in front of a green wall.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Blackwell, meanwhile, says that: "In Wales they make an ointment of it which applyed to the Reins, they reckon a Sovereign Remedy for a bloody-Flux". ("Bloody flux" means dysentery as distinct from the flux of blood referred to by Culpeper).

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Being apparently governed by the moon also linked this little fern with other monthly cycles as far as medicine was concerned, with Culpeper suggesting boiling it in red wine "to stay the immoderate flux of women's courses." (i.e. a heavy period)

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This magical metallurgy extended to the alchemists' long-cherished desire to turn base metals to precious ones. John Parkinson, apothecary and botanist to Charles I, recorded that moonwort could turn lead to silver, the metal governed by the moon.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Nicholas Culpeper, in his 1652 Complete Herbal, wrote that "some laugh to scorn, but country people that I know call it Unshoe the Horse. Besides I have heard commanders say that on White Down in Devonshire there were found thirty horse shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses."

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It was also thought to have power over metal. It was claimed that moonwort could pull the nails from the shoe of any horse that trod on it.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In the Scottish highlands, where it is most common, moonwort was believed to allow witches to harness the power of the moon and to grant access to the land of fairies. Indeed, it could be used as a key to open any lock.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Moonwort gets its sustenance from the roots' symbiotic relationship with fungi, meaning moonwort can live underground without chlorophyll for long periods. That its moon-shaped 'leaves' (not actual leaves) seem to emerge at random made it an obvious plant to link with the irrational realm of magic.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

While some big, leafy ferns stand tall, the mysterious moonwort spends most of its life beneath the soil. Its tiny fronds only appear above ground irregularly to release spores and reproduce.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We've put the vegetable lamb out to pasture. But there's still magic ferns to share from the pages of Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, ones that come from much closer to home. You've heard of the philosopher's stone, but what about the philosopher's fern?

An illustration of moonwort from Elizabeth Blackwell's 1739 book 'A Curious Herbal'. It is a small fern with rounded fronds and large roots.

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Reposted by Jack Gann

Brian Groom @groomb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Leeds Street Scene, 1974, painting by Stuart Walton.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

And Elizabeth Blackwell might be right too. The quercetin in apple peel, a natural antioxidant, helps to produce serotonin and dopamine, the hormones for cheering the spirits. The idea that quercetin also fights cancer, though, is as mythical as King Arthur on his apple island.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

In a 2018 study that argued "the association between daily apple consumption and use of health-care services has never been rigorously examined", daily apple eaters had no difference in numbers of visits to doctors. But they did require less prescription medication. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.com

Association Between Apple Eaters and Physician Visits

This cross-sectional observational study does not support that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”; however, the small fraction of US adults who eat an apple a day do appear to use fewer prescripti...

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Medically, they have since been used for everything from dysentery to fevers, while our exhibition's page from Elizabeth Blackwell suggests that apples are good for "Chearing the Spirits and driving away Melancholy". But do they also drive the doctor away?

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Pliny the Elder wrote about them as good for digestion and gut health. But then he also recorded the legend that people living beside the Ganges survived solely on the aroma of apples.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

That part of Central Asia was a key stopping point on the Silk Road trade routes and, by this path, apples travelled east to China and west to become a staple of the Roman Empire. It was the Romans who brought apples to Britain, grafting them onto local sour crab apples.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The true home of the apple is about 4000 miles from Avalon in Almaty. Kazakhstan's biggest city has a name which means 'father of apples' and the neighbouring Tian Shan mountains are the indigenous home of the sweet apples that we know and love today.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

But 'apple' is just the Old English 'æppel', which means any kind of fruit. So a lot of early apple folklore is just using the name for whatever fruit is in the story. Was the apple of Eden an 'apple' as we understand it today?

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a saying traced back to 19th century Wales, but long before that Welsh folklore tied the apple tree to the wizard Merlin. Merlin's protege, King Arthur, sleeps awaiting his fabled return on Avalon, which means 'Island of Apples'.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Seasons change and so does the page of Elizabeth Blackwell's Curious Herbal that the museum has on display. Summer's 'love apple' has for autumn become a regular apple. But what have apples ever done for us?

An old book on display in a museum. It is open to a page with a colour illustration of a branch of an apple tree, ripe apples hanging from it.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It's ok, I've now also seen Disney's Zombies and it turns out they are all about segregation.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

They are sufficiently acidic, though, to raise doubts about Blackwell's proposed medicinal usage: "Love Apple outwardly applyed is esteemed cooling and moistening, good for Inflammations and Erysipelas; the Juice is commended in hot Defluctions of Rheum upon the Eyes.”

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

And people's readiness to believe the neatness of the tomato-acid-lead-poison story does also point to how anything in this thread should be taken with a grain of salt. Such is the way with trying to sort historic folklore beliefs from modern pop history folklore.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It's probably not true, though, that tomatoes were called 'poison apples', because their acidity reacted with pewter plates to release lead into food. It's a story you will hear repeated, but without much historic evidence. Perhaps the sharing of the 'poison apple' story is itself a bit of folklore.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Tomato's wolfy etymology also gives a name to lycopene, the chemical compound that makes these golden apples red. While a potion with lycopene won't make you wolf out or fall in love, it is good for your heart in other ways. It's what makes tomatoes good for lowering cholesterol and blood pressure.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Another name was 'wolf peach', from the German 'wolfpfirsich', possibly due to the belief that witches used nightshades to lure and trap werewolves. This tradition is still visible in the plant's scientific name: Solanum lycopersicum, the wolf peach nightshade.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The love apple name is also borrowed from the mandrake fruit. Mandrakes appear in the Old Testament as aphrodisiac and their Hebrew name - dudaim - was rendered as 'love apple' in translation. At least until tomatoes came along and seemed a better candidate for a love potion.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Mattioli called it the 'golden apple' (pomodoro), which is still tomato's Italian name. But it had other names too. Blackwell here calls it a 'love apple', an rosy red aphrodisiac fruit.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The first European description of tomato came from Italian naturalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli, in his chapter on the mandrake. With its humanoid roots and hallucinogenic properties, mandrake has long been linked to black magic. If a tomato was a type of mandrake, then it must be a witch's fruit too.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

They may seem just like part of your lunch today, but tomatoes have a longstanding association with witchcraft. They were treated with suspicion from the moment they arrived in Europe in the 1500s. Never mind that Mesoamerican people had been cultivating them and making tomato sauces for centuries.

A photo of the same book, open to the tomato illustration, on display in a museum exhibition. The written caption in the book refers to the tomato as "love apple."

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Here I am promoting the display of Elizabeth Blackwell's 'A Curious Herbal' in the pages of The Yorkshire Post. But why, of all the plants I could have gone with to highlight for our exhibition on folklore, magic, and medicine, have I chosen to look at something as everyday as a tomato?

A photo of me in a newspaper clipping. I am looking at an old book, open to a page with a colour illustration of a tomato plant.

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Jack Gann @jackgann.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Like many people who seem ahead of their time in some respect, Paré was also very much of his time. Some discussion in the office this week about his contention that boiling puppies in oil would make the ideal cure for a gunshot wound.

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