METHUSELAH ARCHIVE PRACTITIONERS / JOANNA STEPHENS

Joanna Stephens

individual · England (born in Berkshire)
lived:1692–1774
active:1735–1739
type:individual
role:promoter
location:England (born in Berkshire)
eventual status:quietly_faded
FINANCIAL CONFLICTS
Stephens offered her recipe to the country for 5,000 pounds. A private subscription raised through the Gentleman's Magazine fell short at 1,356 pounds 3 shillings, so she petitioned Parliament directly; Parliament's own committee tested the medicine on four stone-sufferers, judged them cured, and voted her the full 5,000-pound reward in exchange for total public disclosure, which she made in the London Gazette on 16 June 1739. That single payment -- roughly 650,000 pounds today by one modern urologist's estimate -- is the only financial arrangement documented in this bundle; Stephens went on to purchase a house in Brookgreen, Hammersmith. Unlike contemporaries who sold a proprietary formula under their own name for decades, the only payment from the medicine documented in this bundle is that one lump-sum, government-brokered reward for disclosing the secret.
INTERVENTIONS PROMOTED
EXTERNAL REFERENCES
NOTES

Joanna Stephens was, by the BAUS Virtual Museum of the History of Urology’s account, the daughter of a “Gentleman of good estate and family in Berkshire”; no source in this bundle documents her as a physician, apothecary, or any other credentialed medical figure. In 1738 an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine extolled her cure for the stone, and national interest followed. She offered to reveal her recipe for 5,000 pounds; when a private subscription fell 3,644 pounds short of that price, she petitioned Parliament instead. A committee of 22 doctors, politicians, and scientists examined four stone-sufferers before and after treatment, judged them cured, and Parliament voted the full reward. Stephens published her formula in the London Gazette on 16 June 1739 and, so far as any source in this bundle documents, did not promote a medicine publicly again. No source here records further public activity after 1739; she is documented only as having purchased a house in Brookgreen, Hammersmith, before her death in 1774.