Location: 1200 East Seventh Street, Bloomington, Indiana, 47405-5500
Contact: 812-855-2452, liblilly@indiana.edu
Access: Open to anyone interested in the collection
Website: https://libraries.indiana.edu/lilly-library
J. K. Lilly, Jr. was a major collector of important books in the history of science and medicine and it is to his efforts that the Lilly Library is indebted for many of its treasures in both fields. His medical books contain such monumental works as the great De Humani corporis fabrica of Vesalius (1543) and William Harvey’s description of human blood circulation, De Motu cordis, (1628) as well as first and early editions of Hippocrates, Malpighi, Pare, Hunter, Jenner, Laennec, Bigelow and Fleming among others. This aspect of the Library’s collection is well documented in William R. LeFanu’s Notable Medical Books in the Lilly Library, Indiana University published in 1976. Numbered among the scientific landmarks in Mr. Lilly’s gift were original editions of works by Pliny, Euclid, Copernicus, Kepler, Napier, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Priestley, Lavoisier, Ampere, Faraday, Pasteur, and Curie to name but a few. Among works documenting great moments in medical history, the Library holds the first printing of Fracastoro’s poem on Syphilis (1530); Ramazzini on occupational diseases and Tagliacozzi on plastic surgery (1700 and 1597); Withering’s discussion of the medical uses of digitalis in his An Account of the Foxglove (1785); and Jenner’s Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798).
The Lilly Library also contains more than 1,200 British and European works on food and drink, including Platina’s De honesta voluptate et valitudine [Of Honest Indulgence and Good Health] (Venice, 1475), the earliest in the collection and considered to be the first printed cookery book; Giovanni Rosselli’s Opera nova chiamata Epulario (Venice, 1517), which contains a woodcut believed to be the earliest depiction of a kitchen in a printed book (shown on this page), and the first and only edition of Ain sehr Künstlichs unnd Fürtrefflichs Kockbuch (Augsberg, 1559).
Some exhibition catalogues can be viewed online.
The Lilly Library also offers The Everett Helm Visiting Fellowships and the Mendel Fellowships.