Daffy's Elixir
[citation needed] Other recipes include Guiuacum wood chips, caraway, Salt of Tartar, and scammony.
According to an early nineteenth century advertisement it was used for the following ailments: The Stone in Babies and Children; Convulsion fits; Consumption and Bad Digestives; Agues; Piles; Surfeits; Fits of the Mother and Vapours from the Spleen; Green Sickness; Children's Distempers, whether the Worms, Rickets, Stones, Convulsions, Gripes, King's Evil, Joint Evil or any other disorder proceeding from Wind or Crudities; Gout and Rheumatism; Stone or Gravel in the Kidnies; Cholic and Griping of the Bowels; the Phthisic (both as cure and preventative provided always that the patient be moderate in drinking, have a care to prevent taking cold and keep a good diet; Dropsy and Scurvy.
[2] After Daffy's death in 1680 the recipe was left to his daughter Catherine, and his kinsmen Anthony and Daniel who were apothecaries in Nottingham.
The medicine was later produced by William and Cluer Dicey & Co. of Bow Church yard c.1775 who claimed the sole rights of manufacture of the True Daffy's Elixir, although the recipe was not subject to any patent.
It is also mentioned in the William Makepeace Thackeray book, Vanity Fair 1848, Chapter XXXVIII A Family In a Small Way, where it is referenced in the sentence ‘..and there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously administering Daffy’s Elixir to the infant.’ Daffy's elixir is mentioned in Anthony Trollope's novel Barchester Towers, 1857.
Dixon is warned by Benjamin Franklin, however, that imported Daffy's Elixir is extremely expensive, and he would be better off ordering a customized version from the apothecary.
[6] Daffy’s original elixir salutis, vindicated against all counterfeits, &c. or, An advertisement by mee, Anthony Daffy, of London, citizen and student in physick, By way of vindication of my famous and generally approved cordial drink, (called elixir salutis) from the notoriously false suggestions of one Tho.
(as pretended;) Jane White, Robert Brooke, apothecary, and Edward Willet; all new upstatrt counterfitors of my elixir, and Ape-like imitators of my long since printed Books and Directions, (some of them, nigh verbatim, or word for word) and that to the jeopardy of many good, (but mis-in-formed) Peoples Healths, and Lives too; as also, from the false pretentions of other more sneaking Cub-Quacks, not yet lickt into form, but remaining Moon-blind brats, (still in swadling-clouts) I mean the numerous crew of libellous pamphleteeirs, which are (if possible) more dangerous counterfeiters of my Elixer .
Being a famous cordial drink, found out by the providence of the Almighty, and (for above twenty years) experienced by himself, and divers persons (whose names are at most of their desires here inserted) a most excellent preservative of man-kind.
