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4 unusual facts about William Withering


Edgbaston Golf Club

Before the club moved there, the clubhouse Edgbaston Hall was rented out and one of the notable residents was Dr William Withering.

St Bartholomew's Church, Edgbaston

A memorial to physician and botanist Dr. William Withering, who pioneered the medical use of digitalis (derived from the foxglove), is situated on the south wall of the Lady Chapel, and features carvings of foxgloves and Witheringia solanaceae, a plant named in his honour.

William Withering

In July 2011 a J D Wetherspoon public house opened in Withering's birthplace, Wellington, and has been named after him.

He was buried on 10 October 1799 in Edgbaston Old Church next to Edgbaston Hall, Edgbaston, Birmingham, although the exact site of his grave is unknown.


Thomas Jenkinson Woodward

He also furnished information to Smith for James Sowerby's English Botany, and to William Withering for the second edition of his Systematic Arrangement of British Plants, as well as to Thomas Martyn for his edition of Philip Miller's Gardeners' Dictionary.


see also

Melville Arnott

He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1931 and was appointed William Withering Chair in Medicine at the University of Birmingham in 1946, after serving in the Far East during the Second World War.