FOR two centuries Daffy’s Elixir was one of the best-selling patent medicines. Invented by Leicestershire clergyman Thomas Daffy in 1647, the herb-infused alcoholic laxative originally sold as a stomach medicine but by 1700 was advertised as a cure-all for everything from consumption to rickets.
It continued to be produced by the Daffy family and various imitators throughout the 19th century – Dickens and Thackeray give it a mention in their novels – and there must have been hundreds of thousands of bottles. Today, they are rarities.