The principal work leading up to this project proposal was undertaken by Dr Patrick Wallis and Dr David Haycock at the University of Nottingham during a three-month Wellcome Research Fellowship in the Summer and Autumn of 2003. This focused on the transcription, annotation and critical study of the National Archive's manuscript account book of the late seventeenth-century London proprietary medicine seller Anthony Daffy, principal maker and seller of 'Elixir Salutis', or 'Daffy's Elixir' as it became popularly known for over two centuries. The completed work is to be published in 2005 as supplement 25 in the Wellcome Trust's journal series Medical History.
This study of Daffy's business networks revealed some of the ambiguities in current interpretations of proprietary medicines in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, and the opportunities for further research. Daffy's Elixir was sold through a complex network of agents, stretching throughout the British Isles and abroad into Europe, North America, and the East and West Indies. As well as trading in his Elixir, Daffy bought and sold tobacco, sugar, cotton, and other imported goods, conducting a complex exchange of goods. Daffy's business investments and financial success demonstrates the significance of proprietary medicines and other medical products in the growth in British commercial enterprise and trade in this period. During the project, through detailed research using a wide range of primary sources, we were able to uncover information on many of the individuals involved with Daffy's business, and we demonstrated the potential of tracing distribution and retail networks through manuscript and printed materials. Primary sources such as the autobiography of the grocer William Stout of Lancaster and town histories provided further information on medical retailing in the period.
My work prior to this project has included lengthy and detailed studies of the culture
of medicine and disease through this period. My monograph on Dr Stukeley was published in 2002, based on research undertaken under the supervision of Prof. Michael Hunter. My 3-year Leverhulme Fellowship working with Professor George S. Rousseau explored the cultural aspects of disease through this period, whilst during my recent Ahmanson-Getty Research Fellowship at the Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, I investigated the role played by alchemical/chemical medicine in the mid to late seventeenth century, the quest for an 'Elixir of Life', and the potential of 'restoring' human lifespans to the near thousand years of the Biblical patriarchs and even to the lost immortality of Adam.