eventually becomes almost
black in colour. (A. L. G.; M. F.*)

DIGGES, WEST (1720-1786), English actor, made his first stage appearance
in Dublin in 1749 as Jaffier in _Venice Preserved_; and both there and
in Edinburgh until 1764 he acted in many tragic roles with success. He
was the original "young Norval" in Home's _Douglas_ (1756). His first
London appearance was as Cato in the Haymarket in 1777, and he
afterwards played Lear, Macbeth, Shylock and Wolsey. In 1881 he returned
to Dublin and retired in 1784.

DIGIT (Lat. _digitus_, finger), literally a finger or toe, and so used
to mean, from counting on the fingers, a single numeral, or, from
measuring, a finger's breadth. In astronomy a digit is the twelfth part
of the diameter of the sun or moon; it is used to express the magnitude
of an eclipse.

DIGITALIS. The leaves of the foxglove (q.v.), gathered from wild plants
when about two-thirds of their flowers are expanded, deprived usually
of the petiole and the thicker part of the midrib, bitter taste; and to
preserve their properties they must be kept excluded from light in
stoppered bottles. They are occasionally adulterated with the leaves of
_Inula Conyza_, ploughman's spikenard, which may be distinguished by
their greater roughness, their less divided margins, and their odour
when rubbed; also with the leaves of _Symphytum officinale_, comfrey,
and of _Verbascum Thapsus_, great mullein, which unlike those of the
foxglove have woolly upper and under surfaces. The earliest known
descriptions of the foxglove are those given by Leonhard Fuchs and
Tragus about the middle of the 16th century, but its virtues were
doubtless known to herbalists at a much remoter period. J. Gerarde, in
his _Herbal_ (1597), advocates the use of foxglove for a variety of
complaints; and John Parkinson, in the _Theatrum Botanicum_, or _Theater
of Plants_ (1640), and later W. Salmon, in _The New London
Dispensatory_, similarly praised the remedy. Digitalis was first brought
prominently under the notice of the medical profession by Dr W.
Withering, who, in his _Account of the Foxglove_ (1785), gave details of
upwards of 200 cases chiefly dropsical, in which it was used.

Digitalis contains four important glucosides, of which three are cardiac
stimulants. The most powerful is _digitoxin_ C34H54O11, an extremely
poisonous and cumulative drug, insoluble in water. _Digitalin_,
C35H56O14, is crystalline and is also insolu