Abstract
MARCH 17 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Dr. William Withering, who was celebrated alike as physician, botanist and mineralogist. He was born at Wellington, Shropshire, the only son of Edmund Withering, a surgeon. He received his medical education at Edinburgh, where he qualified in 1776 with a thesis on “Malignant Putrid Sore Throat”, which he afterwards identified with a severe form of scarlet fever. After a visit to Paris, where he attended a meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences, he settled in Stafford in 1767 and first began to collect flowers. In 1775 he moved to Birmingham, where he soon acquired a lucrative practice, and the following year published his most important work entitled “A Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain”. The book went through seven editions, and an abbreviated version, of which three were published, by W. Macgillivray, first appeared in 1830.
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William Withering. Nature 147, 325 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147325b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147325b0