An 1885 photograph of Colonel Eli Lilly. American Civil War veteran, founder of Eli Lilly & Co., inventor, chemist, philanthropist.
Col. Eli Lilly was born on July 8, 1838 in Baltimore, Maryland, as the first of eleven children, in a religious home that valued education. His teen years were spent in Indiana, where his interest in chemistry first began. During a visit to his aunt and uncle in the city, his attention was captured by a drugstore filled with interestingly shaped bottles and jars that emitted strange aromas onto the street. He later got a job there as an apprentice to a pharmacist. He learned how to mix chemicals, manage funds, and operate a business, an innocuous prelude to his founding of the first drug company to mass-produce insulin. He traveled and worked throughout the state before opening his own drugstore in January of 1861 and marrying his childhood sweetheart, Emily, soon after. In April of the same year, he joined the infantry during the American Civil War as a member of the Union Army and became a decorated soldier.
Tragedy struck soon after the war when his wife Emily died in 1866, spurring Lilly to leave his son with his parents and join wholesale drug firms as a chemist. Eventually, he again formed his own drug store, Binford & Lilly, Practical Pharmacists, that became very successful. But Lilly grew restless and wanted to start his own drug manufacturing business. After several failed attempts, finally, at age 38, Eli Lilly started to establish himself in the field with a line of pills, fluid extracts, elixirs, and cordials, committed to creating high-quality products for use by physicians. On May 10, 1876, he opened his shop, the sign outside reading “Eli Lilly, Chemist”. This would later become Eli Lilly and Company, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of pharmaceutical products. One of the early landmarks for the company was an agreement with the University of Toronto to mass produce insulin. Although insulin was discovered in Toronto’s Connaught Laboratories in 1921, their facilities were limited in the scale of production needed to supply all those living with diabetes - what was then a fatal condition with no effective treatment options.
In 1923 Eli Lilly and Company became the first to provide a mass-produced insulin product for the treatment of diabetes. Building on their pioneering work, in 1983 the company produced the world’s first human-health-care product created using DNA technology, Humulin, a man-made insulin medication also used in the treatment of diabetes.
Lilly’s later years consisted of patronage to civic and community affairs, including serving on the Indianapolis Board of Trade, organizing the distribution of natural gas to businesses and residents of the city, and serving as the founder and director of the Commercial Club, which would later become the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. After a short illness, Col. Eli Lilly died on June 6, 1898. In addition to his legacy of founding the first company to produce insulin for the masses, he was also remembered as a brave soldier, distinguished citizen, and benevolent man by his community.
— Written by Cindy Tao