Eli Lilly

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Eli Lilly (1885) Eli Lilly Signature.svg

Eli Lilly (born July 8, 1838 in Baltimore , † June 6, 1898 in Indianapolis ) was an American officer , pharmaceutical chemist , entrepreneur , tycoon , philanthropist and founder of Eli Lilly and Company .

During the American Civil War , he joined the Union Army and militiamen recruited for his artillery - battery . He was later promoted to colonel and was in command of a cavalry battalion . He was captured shortly before the end of the war and remained in captivity until the Confederate States surrendered . After the war he opened a plantation in Mississippi , which he was unable to manage successfully. After the death of his wife, he returned to his trained profession as a pharmacist . He married again and from then on worked in various pharmacies. In 1876 he opened his own company with the aim of producing drugs himself and selling them to pharmacies in wholesaling .

His business was successful, and he quickly became wealthy after making various advances in the manufacture of medicinal products. Two of his early successes were creating a gelatin capsule to make the medication last, and a fruit flavoring for liquid medicine. The Eli Lilly and Company was one of the first pharmaceutical company of its kind with its own research department and numerous quality assurance measures .

Lilly used his fortune for various charitable activities. In 1890 he handed over the management of his company to his son Josiah Kirby Lilly, Sr. , in order to concentrate more on his social commitment . He founded the predecessor of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce , the Chamber of Commerce of Indianapolis, and was the first president of the Indian branch of the Charity Organization Society . He also founded the municipal children 's hospital , which was later developed into the state Riley Children's Hospital at Indiana University . In addition, he was involved in numerous other organizations until he died of cancer in 1898 .

Eli Lilly was a proponent of government regulation in the pharmaceutical sector. Many of his proposed reforms were passed into law in 1906 that later became the US Food and Drug Administration . He was considered to be the pioneer of prescription requirements , which meant that drugs that were addictive or dangerous were only given to people who had previously consulted a doctor . The Eli Lilly and Company is still one of the largest and most influential pharmaceutical companies in the world and the largest company in the US state of Indiana . His son and grandchildren used a portion of the company's profits to set up Lilly Endowment in 1937 , which is now one of the largest private foundations in the world. This is intended to continue his philanthropic ideas.

Life

Family and early years

Eli Lilly was born on July 8, 1838 in Baltimore to Gustavus and Esther Lilly. His family was of Swedish descent and first moved to the Benelux region before his grandparents immigrated to Maryland in 1789 . His family moved to Kentucky , where he also attended school. In 1852 the Lillys moved on to Indiana, where Eli trained as a printer . Lilly grew up in a Methodist family that was for prohibition and against slavery . Her belief was one of the reasons she moved to Indiana. He and his parents were first members of the Democratic Party , but joined the Republicans before the Civil War .

Eli Lilly took an early interest in chemicals. On the way to his aunt and uncle, he visited a pharmacy , where he saw the manufacture of medicines for the first time. In 1854 he began a second training as a chemist and pharmacist under Henry Lawrence at the Good Samaritan Drug Store in Lafayette . Lawrence taught him not only the concoction of drugs, but also how to run a business and manage money. His parents sent him to DePauw University , where he studied pharmacology and received his doctorate after two years. In 1859 he started working for the Perkin's and Coon’s Pharmacy in Indianapolis. He met Emily Lemen, the daughter of a local merchant, and the couple married in 1860. They moved to Greencastle , where Lilly opened his own pharmacy in 1861.

American Civil War

A poster with Eli Lilly's call for recruitment

At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, Eli Lilly joined the Union Army . While serving in the army, his son Josiah was born. Lilly actively recruited from his former schoolmates, friends, local traders and farmers and tried to get them into his unit. He created and distributed posters around Indianapolis, promoting his crack battery of Indiana . His unit, the 18th Independent Battery Indiana Light Artillery ( dt . 18th Independent Light Artillery Battery of Indiana ), was known as the Lilly Battery . It comprised six parrots and was 150 men strong. He gathered everyone in Indianapolis and trained the soldiers in a short time. From August 1862 to the winter of 1863 he was in command of his unit, which belonged to the Lightning Brigade under the command of Colonel John T. Wilder . Before he became a commanding officer, he had had little military experience in Lafayette with the Indiana Legion . Many of his comrades considered him too young and inexperienced to run the battery. Despite his initial inexperience, he became a competent artillery officer and his unit was instrumental in several important battles. Its first deployment was in 1863 during the Battle of Hoover's Gap , followed by deployments during the Second Battle of Chattanooga and the Battle of Chickamauga .

When Lilly's time in command ended, he switched to cavalry and was promoted to major in command of the 9th Indiana Cavalry . During a mission in Alabama in December 1864, he was by troops under the command of Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured and Confederate POW camp from Enterprise in Mississippi interned. After the war ended in the spring of 1865, he was released on parole. In recognition of his services, he was promoted to colonel shortly before his discharge from the army . At a later point in life he marked all his troop movements and the locations of his battles and skirmishes in an atlas . He often used the atlas when telling stories about the war. His rank linked him for the rest of his life, and his friends and family used Colonel as his nickname . Eli Lilly was from 1893 chairman of the Grand Army of the Republic , an association of veterans of the civil war. During his tenure, he helped organize a major military parade that gathered tens of thousands of veterans in Indianapolis.

Early Business Activities

Eli Lilly (right) with his son Josiah Kirby Lilly, Sr. (left) and his grandson Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr. (center)

After the war, tried Lilly to implement a new business idea, and bought a 1,200 hectare large cotton plantation in Mississippi. Shortly after moving to their new home, the whole family became infected with mosquito- borne malaria , which was widespread in the region. While Eli Lilly and his son survived the disease, his wife Emily died on August 20, 1866. She was eight months pregnant at the time of her death and suffered a stillbirth . His wife's death dealt Lilly much, and he wrote to his family: I can not say how much it makes me sad ... It is a bitter, bitter truth, Emily is actually dead ... . She was initially buried on the plantation, but later that year her body was exhumed and reburied in Indiana. When Eli Lilly moved to Indiana due to grief, the plantation fell into disrepair, so there was no harvest. His business partner was unable to run the plantation himself due to a drought and disappeared with the rest of the business assets. Lilly therefore had to file for bankruptcy in 1868 . He sent his son Josiah to live with his parents in Greencastle while he himself closed his business on the plantation. A short time later he met Maria Cynthia Sloan, whom he married in 1869. He started working for the medical wholesale company Pattison, Moore & Talbott . While he was there, the company was bought by H. Daly and Company .

In the same year he left Indiana and founded the successful Binford and Lilly pharmacy with his business partner in Paris , Illinois . The business was profitable and allowed Lilly to put money aside. However, he was more interested in medical manufacturing than running a pharmacy and devised a plan to start his own wholesale business. In 1873 he left the company and his business partner and returned to Indianapolis, where he and a new partner founded the Johnson and Lilly pharmacy . Three years later he broke the business relationship again. His share of the assets included several devices, a few liters of unused chemicals and a small amount of money. Even before the dissolution, he had made an agreement with his family friend, Augustus Keifer, that he and two pharmacies affiliated with him would purchase all their medicines from Eli Lilly at a lower price. On May 10, 1876, Lilly opened a drug manufacturing laboratory. He called this Eli Lilly, a chemist .

Eli Lilly & Company

Eli Lilly's first manufacturing facility in 1876 at 15 West Pearl Street in Indianapolis. Eli Lilly is in the middle, his son on the right and his other employee on the left.

Lilly's manufacturing facility began with three employees, including his fourteen-year-old son Josiah, who had left school to help his father. Eli began with an initial investment of 1,400 US dollars ( adjusted for inflation today: $ 34,387.53). His first innovation was a gelatin coating for pills and capsules . He also invented a fruit flavor for medicines and sweetened pills to make them easier to take. After coming into much contact with cheap products during the civil war, he committed himself to only produce high-quality prescription-only products as a counter-offer to the widespread and often useless prescription-free drugs. One of his first products was quinine , an anti-malarial drug. It became his best-selling drug. His products became known in the city for their high quality and quickly gained popularity. In its first year of business, it had sales of $ 4,470 (today: $ 109,794.46) and in 1879 it was $ 48,000 (today: $ 1,266,799.46). Its sales volume grew and it began supplying pharmacies outside of Indiana. In 1878 he hired his brother James as the first full-time salesperson, who later began, along with other employees, to sell the products nationwide. As the company grew, other family members were also employed. Lilly's cousin Evan Lilly began working as an accountant, while his grandchildren Eli and Josiah were employed as temporary workers and jumpers . In 1881 he officially incorporated the company and renamed it Eli Lilly and Company . He was a leading Indianapolis entrepreneur in the late 1880s , with over 100 employees and annual sales of over $ 200,000 (now $ 5,476,888.52).

An 1886 drawing by his McCarty Street company

In order to be able to further develop his rapidly growing company, he bought various buildings to set up research and production facilities. He acquired a complex of several buildings on McCarty Street in southern Indianapolis and others developed the area with other business people into an important industrial district of the city. Eli Lilly sent his son to the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1880 with the hope that Josiah would be of even greater help to the company with the additional knowledge he gained. When Josiah returned to the company, he was appointed head of research. In 1890 Eli Lilly transferred the management to his son, who continued to run the company for several decades. The company flourished despite the turbulent economic conditions in the 1890s. In 1894 Lilly bought a manufacturing facility that was used exclusively for making capsules. With the technical advances that the company achieved, capsule production was largely automated. In the years that followed, the company manufactured several million capsules and pills annually.

Eli Lilly and Company differed from many other small pharmaceutical companies in the United States in that it had a permanent research team, continued advancement in the automated manufacture of medicines, and its strict focus on high quality standards. Eli Lilly was initially the only researcher in the entire company. As the company grew, he put together his own team, which from then on took care of the development of new drugs. He hired his first researcher in 1886. The research methods were still based on Eli Lilly's ideas. He also continued to take care of quality assurance. In addition, he took measures to ensure that the drugs were manufactured as the advertising promised, that they had the right composition and ingredients and that the dose per drug was exactly the right one. He was aware of the sometimes addictive and dangerous substances and a pioneer in the field of prescription requirements. As a result, only those people who had previously consulted a doctor received certain drugs.

philanthropy

Eli Lilly in 1895

At the time of his age-related retirement from operations, Eli Lilly was a millionaire. He has been involved in various city affairs and civic groups and has become increasingly philanthropic . So he donated more and more money to charity in the city. He and twenty-five other businessmen began sponsoring the Charity Organization Society and was quickly elected chairman of the Indiana branch in the late 1870s . The organization was a predecessor of the United Way of America and was the umbrella association for various charitable groups. The central coordination made it easier for the association to manage and allocate funds.

A major concern of Lilly was the economic growth and general development of Indianapolis. To achieve this, he supported local organizations with financial resources, but also with his personal knowledge and training. He recognized the population's need for a water supply , which resulted in the Indianapolis Water Company . In 1890 he founded the Commercial Club and became its first president. The club played a central role in its urban development plans and was a forerunner of the later city chamber of commerce . This organization has been instrumental in making many advances. This included, among other things, that the entire city was connected with cobbled streets, that elevated railways were built and that a sewer system was built. In addition, several companies have been set up with the help of private and public investors. The entrepreneurs were thus able to earn money quickly and slowly bought their businesses back from the original investors. This model was later used in most other states for water and electricity utilities. In addition, various parks, monuments and memorials were built with the support of the organization. It also successfully attracted business people and investors from other areas who drove the further development of the city.

The natural gas - Boom of Indiana in the 1880s moved Lilly and his Commercial Club to found a project to the gas from the Trenton Gas Field to pump into the city and sell them at low prices to companies and private customers. The project led to the founding of the Consumer Gas Trust Company , which Lilly gave the name to. The new company continued to offer the gas at affordable prices and improved living conditions in the city. Among other things, the gas was used to produce electricity to operate a tram .

During the panic of 1893 , Eli Lilly set up a commission to provide food and shelter for those affected. His work with the Commission led him to make a private donation and to set up a children's hospital to help the many families who had no money for medical treatment.

The Soldiers 'and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. Inside is the Colonel Eli Lilly Civil War Museum .

Lilly's friends often tried to get him to hold political office. In 1896 they wanted to send him into the running for the Republican Party as a candidate for governor . However, Eli Lilly turned down all public office because he wanted to focus on his philanthropic organizations. However, he regularly supported candidates and also donated money to politicians who supported his cause. Former Governor Oliver P. Morton , with whom he became friends, suggested that he build a memorial with his Commercial Club in honor of the Civil War veterans . Lilly agreed and began building the Soldiers 'and Sailors' Monument in 1888 . However, the construction was not completed until 1901. The Civil War Museum in the building was named in his honor.

Lilly was a passionate fisherman and built a family home on Lake Wawa in 1887 , where he regularly withdrew to relax from 1880. In 1892 he had the Hotel Wawasee Inn built, which attracted many families to the local recreation area . His grandson later expanded the hotel. Eli Lilly also owned a large estate on Tennessee Street in Indianapolis, where he lived and spent most of his time. After 1897 cancer was diagnosed, he died there on June 6, 1898. He was on June 9, laid out and thousands of people paid their last respects before at a large tomb in Crown Hill Cemetery was buried.

Afterlife

Today's logo of Eli Lilly and Company

The Eli Lilly and Company had in 1898 a range of over 2,005 products and a turnover of over US $ 300,000 (now $ 9,523,021.61). His son Josiah Kirby Lilly, Sr. inherited the company and continued to run it in the spirit of his father before he bequeathed it to his sons Eli Lilly and Josiah Kirby Lilly, Jr. They kept the philanthropic attitude and later founded the Lilly Endowment , which in 1998 became the wealthiest foundation in the world. It has since been overhauled, but it is still one of the ten most generous and largest organizations. The company played an important role in delivering medical supplies to victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake . The Eli Lilly and Company has been led by the grandchildren of Eli Lilly one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Important innovations and inventions such as the development of the first insulin preparations in the 1920s, the mass production of the antibiotic penicillin in the 1940s and the general promotion of mass production of medical products originated from this company. Even after the transformation into a public traded company in 1952, the innovations continued. This is how the products methadone , fluoxetine and many more were created.

Eli Lilly's greatest contributions were his standardized and methodical approach to the manufacture of drugs, his commitment to research and development and the great importance of his drugs to this day. He is considered a pioneer of the modern pharmaceutical industry and many of his ideas from that time are now standard practice. Until his reforms, drugs were often regarded as “exotic miracle cures” and only found broad social acceptance through Lilly's developments. Lilly campaigned for state regulation and control in the pharmaceutical industry all her life, and his son carried these concerns on.

literature

  • Bodenhamer, David J .: The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis . Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-31222-1 .
  • Glass, James A. & Kohrman, David: The Gas Boom of East Central Indiana . Arcadia Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-7385-3963-5 .
  • Hallett, Anthony & Dianne: Entrepreneur Magazine Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs . John Wiley and Sons, 1997, ISBN 0-471-17536-6 .
  • Loderhose, Gary: Legendary Hoosiers: Famous Folks from the State of Indiana . Emmis Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57860-097-9 .
  • Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 .
  • Podczeck, Fridrun & Jones, Brian E .: Pharmaceutical capsules . Pharmaceutical Press, 2004, ISBN 0-85369-568-7 .
  • Price, Nelson: Indiana Legends . Emmis Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57860-006-5 .

Web links

Commons : Eli Lilly  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Price, Nelson: Indiana Legends . Emmis Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57860-006-5 , pp. 58 .
  2. ^ A b c d e f Price, Nelson: Indiana Legends . Emmis Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57860-006-5 , pp. 59 .
  3. ^ A b c d e Price, Nelson: Indiana Legends . Emmis Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57860-006-5 , pp. 60 .
  4. ^ Hallett, Anthony & Dianne: Entrepreneur Magazine Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs . John Wiley and Sons, 1997, ISBN 0-471-17536-6 , pp. 313 .
  5. ↑ a b c Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 1 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Bodenhamer, David J .: The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis . Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-31222-1 , pp. 911 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Hallett, Anthony & Dianne: Entrepreneur Magazine Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs . John Wiley and Sons, 1997, ISBN 0-471-17536-6 , pp. 314 .
  8. ^ Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 2 .
  9. ↑ Loderhose, Gary: Legendary Hoosiers: Famous Folks from the State of Indiana . Emmis Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57860-097-9 , pp. 103 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 6 .
  11. ↑ a b Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 4 .
  12. ^ A b c d Price, Nelson: Indiana Legends . Emmis Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57860-006-5 , pp. 57 .
  13. ↑ a b Loderhose, Gary: Legendary Hoosiers: Famous Folks from the State of Indiana . Emmis Books, 2001, ISBN 1-57860-097-9 , pp. 104 .
  14. ↑ Podczeck, Fridrun & Jones, Brian E.: Pharmaceutical capsules . Pharmaceutical Press, 2004, ISBN 0-85369-568-7 , pp. 12-13 .
  15. ↑ Bodenhamer, David J .: The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis . Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-31222-1 , pp. 540 .
  16. ^ Milestones in Medical Research. Eli Lilly & Company, archived from the original on March 3, 2009 ; accessed on March 10, 2015 .
  17. ^ Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 3 .
  18. ↑ a b c d Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 5 .
  19. ^ The Philanthropy Hall of Fame. Retrieved March 10, 2015 .
  20. ↑ a b c Bodenhamer, David J .: The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis . Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-31222-1 , pp. 912 .
  21. ^ Glass, James A. & Kohrman, David: The Gas Boom of East Central Indiana . Arcadia Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-7385-3963-5 , pp. 16 .
  22. ↑ a b c d RetroIndy: Eli Lilly & Co. The Indianapolis Star , January 23, 2014, accessed March 15, 2015 .
  23. ↑ Top 100 US Foundations by Asset Size. Foundation Center , accessed March 15, 2015 .
  24. ↑ Top 100 US Foundations by Total Giving. Foundation Center, accessed March 15, 2015 .
  25. ^ Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 17-18, 21 .
  26. ^ Madison, James H .: Eli Lilly: A Life, 1885-1977 . Indiana Historical Society, 1989, ISBN 0-87195-047-2 , pp. 51, 112-115 .
personal data
SURNAME Lilly, Eli
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American officer, pharmaceutical chemist, entrepreneur, tycoon, philanthropist, and founder of Eli Lilly and Company
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1898
Place of death Indianapolis