MD3PAD 538-540 Daffy's elixir

[jbor at bigpond.com]

> Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 01:12:05 -0400
>
> Wicks advises Mason to take Daffy's elixir, but Mason says that
> Dixon drinks it all the time and he'd rather not drink it too.

from:
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/teaching/sle/Book/drinkgloss.htm

267.3 "Daffy's Elixir" Daffy. "So called after a seventeenth-century
clergyman, daffy was a medicine for children. It was a mixture of senna  
to
which gin was commonly added, and hence became the slang name for gin
itself." (_Oliver Twist_, Chapter 2, note 1)

Daffy's Elixir. Invented by said clergyman in the Restoration period.  
"What
it tasted like one can no longer tell, but it was probably pretty good  
since
it contained brandy, canary wine, oranges, lemons, rhubarb and a certain
amount of borax, perhaps to convince customers that it really was a  
medicine
and not just a rather expensive sort of gin."

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon- 
l&month=0201&msg=64020&keywords=daffy%27s

best