Eli Lilly was an American soldier, pharmacist, chemist, and businessman. He founded the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation in 1876. He was an advocate of federal regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Many of his suggested reforms were enacted into law in 1906. Lilly died from cancer in 1898.
About Eli Lilly in brief
Eli Lilly was an American soldier, pharmacist, chemist, and businessman. He founded the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation in 1876. He was an advocate of federal regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Lilly died from cancer in 1898. His son, J. K. Lilly, and grandsons, Eli Jr. and Josiah Jr. established the Lilly Endowment in 1937; it remains as one of the largest charitable benefactors in the world and continues the Lilly legacy of philanthropy. Lilly was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 8, 1838. His family was of Swedish descent and had moved to the low country of France before his great-grandparents immigrated to Maryland in 1789. Lilly and his family were members of the Democratic Party during his early life, but they became Republicans during the years leading up to the Civil War. He enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War and recruited a company of men to serve with him in the 18th Independent Battery Indiana Light Artillery. After the war, he attempted to run a plantation in Mississippi, but it failed and he returned to his pharmacy profession after the death of his first wife. Lilly remarried and worked with business partners in several pharmacies in Indiana and Illinois before opening his own business in1876 in Indianapolis. His company manufactured drugs and marketed them on a wholesale basis to pharmacies. Many of his suggested reforms were enacted into law in 1906, resulting in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
He helped form what became the common practice of giving addictive or dangerous medicines only to people who had first seen a physician. He personally funded a children’s hospital in Indianapolis, known as Eleanor Hospital. Lilly continued his active involvement with many other organizations until his death in 1898, when he turned over the management of the company to his son, Josiah K. Lilly, Sr. The company he founded has since grown into one of the largest and most influential pharmaceutical corporations in the world, and the largest corporation in Indiana. In 1858 Lilly left the business to work for a wholesale druggist to take a position at the Greencastle Pharmacy. In 1860 he opened his own drugstore in Greencastle. In 1861 he married Emily Lemon, the daughter of a Greenfield merchant, and a few months later the couple resided in Greenfield, Indiana. The couple’s son, later called “J.K. Kirby”, was born on November 18, 1861, while Eli was serving in the military during the civil war. He later moved to Indianapolis in 1860 to work in Jerome Allen’s drugstore and later called himself “Joe K. Kirby” The couple later had a son, Joe Kirby, who later called his father “Jomo” Lilly. Lilly became interested in chemicals as a teen. He completed a four-year apprenticeship with Henry Lawrence’s Good Samaritan Drug Store, a local apothecary shop, where he watched Lawrence prepare pharmaceutical drugs. He also assisted at a local printing press as a printer’s devil.
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