A bitter, toxic compound extracted from digitalis plants, historically used as a heart medication in carefully controlled doses.
From 'digitalis' plus chemical suffix '-in,' standard in German pharmaceutical nomenclature. 'Digitalis' comes from Latin 'digitus' (finger), referring to the flower shape.
Digitalin was one of the first drugs ever purified from plants and used as a reliable medicine—doctors in the 1700s-1800s had to be detectives, finding exactly which compound in foxglove leaves was doing the work and measuring it precisely to avoid poisoning patients.
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