Medicine and Science

Illustration of a voltaic pile. — Illustration from Alexander Volta. On the Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds. (London, 1800).

Medicine and Science

About the Collection

Many great works from the history of science and medicine came to the Lilly Library as part of the original gift from Josiah Kirby Lilly Jr.

As a third-generation heir and leader of Eli Lilly & Co., Lilly collected numerous important works about medicine and science, including De Humani Corporis Fabrica of Vesalius (1643) and William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628), a description of blood circulation.

Also among the collections are first and early editions of Hippocrates, Malpighi, Pare, Hunger, Jenner, Laennec and Bigelow, as well as scientific landmarks such as original editions of works by Pliny, Euclid, Copernicus, Kepler, Napier, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Ampere, Pasteur, Faraday and Curie, among others.

The library holds the first printing of Fracastoro’s poem on syphilis (1530); Ramazzini on occupational diseases (1700) and Talgiacozzi on plastic surgery (1597); Withering’s discussion of the medical uses of digitalis in An Account of the Foxglove (1785); and Jenner’s Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798).

The collection has grown over the years, thanks to gifts of Dr. Edgar F. Kiser’s medical collection, and the papers of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Hermann J. Muller, biologist Tracy M. Sonneborn and mathematician Vaclav Hlavaty.

Have a Question?

Erin Chiparo

Silver-Norman Curator of Dermatology, General Medicine, and Science

echiparo@iu.edu

Related Resources

Image of the anatomy of the arm from historical textbook

Online Collection

William Harvey's De Motu Cordis

English physician William Harvey (1578-1657) was the first person to accurately describe the circulation of the blood. His 1628 book, De Motu Cordis, described his experiments and observations.

Close up view of woodcut image of a flea from Robert Hooke's Micrographia (London, 1665.)

Online Exhibition

Anatomia Animata: Anatomy and Medicine in William Harvey's Century

A range of seventeenth-century books on medicine are the focus of this catalogue. Learn about the rise of microscopic anatomy, sophisticated injection techniques, and anatomical experiments that transformed the understanding of the body's structure and organization.

Hermann J. Muller in his laboratory, examining a specimen through a magnifying lens.

Finding aid

Hermann J. Muller papers

The papers of Nobel Prize laureate Hermann J. Muller illustrate his ground-breaking research into the effects of radiation on mutation. They also tell the story of his life and career, which took him from New York to Texas to Europe in the tumultuous years before the second World War and, eventually, to Bloomington, Indiana.

A sixteenth-century scene of several men performing the amputation of a patient's leg.

Exhibition Catalogue

Medicine : an exhibition of books relating to medicine and surgery from the collection formed by J.K. Lilly : Lilly Library, Indiana University.

An account of J. K. Lilly's collecting of books on medicine by David Randall, a book dealer who worked closely with Lilly and who became the first director of the Lilly Library.

Exhibition Catalogue

Music for the Worms: Darwin at the Lilly Library

This online exhibition tracks Charles Darwin's career from the publication of his first bestselling book, the Journal of Researches, popularly known as the Voyage of the Beagle, to his last popular success, a book about earthworms.