Peter Elmer is a historian of early modern Britain and taught for seventeen years at the Open University before becoming a research fellow at Exeter University. There, along with his colleague Jonathan Barry, he was engaged in a five-year project entitled 'The Medical World of Early Modern England, Ireland and Wales, c.1500-1715', a large prosopographical study of the medical 'profession'. He is retired but remains busy working on a large online database of medical practitioners.