Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Eli Lilly's Secret Pot Farm

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

One of the nation's leading pharmaceutical companies once maintained one of the biggest marijuana farms in the country. This week on Sawbones, how Eli Lilly lost its taste for pot, and why it refuses to acknowledge its past. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth. Hello everyone and welcome to Saw B of our little tour of Miss guided medicine I'm your co-host Justin McAroy And I'm Sydney McAroy Thank you It's kind of for both of us because we're a team. So I average out the cheering and I just take the median. And that's the median, is that average of the mean?

Cosine, okay. It's okay. Welcome to Indianapolis, Sydney, Macaroy. Okay. It's okay. You don't have to know that. Welcome to Indianapolis City, McAroy. Thanks. Just me? What? Welcome everyone. Well, you might live here.

Well, come anyway. Some of you probably live there. What might be your hometown? Whenever we get to go on the road and do shows, we try to find topics for solvones that relate to where we're going. And as I was looking into Indianapolis and stuff about the history and medical history and that kind of thing, one of the things I came across, which I realize now is I'm about

to do the show, is it full hearty to go somewhere and like kind of knock on one of their biggest corporations? No! Thank you! They love it! and like kind of knock on one of their biggest corporations. No. They can do. They love it. That's it. That.

They love it. And knock is probably a strong term. It's probably a, if I know you, it's probably a celebratory, nice story. We actually, this really, this happened because we did this in Salt Lake City. We went to Salt Lake City, the home of like the country's biggest essential oil manufacturers, and I decided yeah I'm just gonna talk about how bad they are. And so... They were loving it though because I guess they were tired of their Facebook walls just being absolutely full of Moby-level marketing. Yeah, right. So we're gonna talk about Eli Lilly.

Actually, you can see from our like hotel room. You can see like a giant Lilly building. Yeah, it's I don't know what I don't know which one I assume there are many right like there's a lot A lot but yeah, it's really large. I don't I guess we could go visit maybe tomorrow or maybe not I will see we'll see if we're sort of a welcome presence This isn't bad. This is like a lot of drug companies that have been around for a really long time occasionally They dabbled in things been around for a really long time, occasionally they dabbled in things that are not traditionally accepted as medications today, or maybe should be. And Eli Lilly doesn't always like to talk about that part of their history, but we do,

so we're going to. I said, I'm going to call you a furniture salesman because you're really couching it. I get angry letters, like I'm not, I'm not, it's not slander or anything. It's just a... So, as you may imagine Eli Lilly is named for Eli Lilly, who was like a guy and that was his name Eli Lilly. He was actually... So far? so good.

He wasn't born here, he was actually born in Baltimore, but he moved around a bit with his family, ending up in Kentucky for a while, and then back in Indiana where he attended what was Indiana Azbury University, which is now DePaul. And I love this part of his biography because if you read it, it says, Lily became interested in chemicals as a teen. I think a lot of us can relate to that. All right, he lied to me too.

But he wanted to do stuff with them. He wanted to be a chemist, not just, you know, use them. And so he was on a trip with his aunt and uncle and he was he visited this drug store that it was called the Henry Lawrence Good Samaritan drug store. And he watched what the apothecary was doing there. And he got really excited about it and said, like, can I come and work here and apprentice with you for a while and learn how to do what you're doing? And they said, yeah.

And so four years later, he had actually completed a full chemistry. And at the time, that would have been a pretty standard training course for a pharmacist. A lot of it was made up anyway. So we learned how to mix chemicals. And he also learned a lot about managing businesses and funds and that kind of thing from the guy who ran the drug store. So he kind of apprenticed him in business management as well as in making drugs.

And so he was ready to kind of go out into the world and make drugs for people. Well, as his plan, but he had to work for a while. He worked in Indianapolis for a while at different drug stores, just working kind of like as the pharmacist at the counter, not really owning the operation or making new medications, just mixing and selling compounds that were already known. His career got interrupted for a while because there was a war,

the civil one. Yeah, so that side tracked him for a little bit. He had to stop pursuing chemistry and instead he was on the union side which is good. I say that because we were talking about the civil war in Nashville yesterday. And when I said that because we were talking about the Civil War in Nashville yesterday. And when I said that the guy was on the union side that we were talking about, everybody's coming, okay. All right. That's not fair to Nashville.

They are very pro-union at this point now. I'm just saying. You're just saying that in Nashville, they kind of wish the Confederacy had what? I'm just saying that. I'm not saying that. You're just saying they kind of think the South of the rise again. The world's northern aggression, etc., etc. I'm just saying that being a West Virginia, it's nice to be back in the Union. Yeah.

That's all I'm saying. We had a great time in Nashville, a lot of great music, a lot of great food. It's a lovely place that doesn't condone slavery at all. No. That's for me, Justin McRoy, the one who doesn't get the louder cheers. Sydney's doing her best to even things out.

I'm just saying that I- You're still just- I gave you a pause. You don't have to keep digging, Sid. For the North. Anyway. So, after the war, he went back to his chemistry business. On May 10th, 1876, he opened his own labs.

He finally got to pursue what he had been wanting to do since his teen years when he first got so interested in chemicals. He started his own laboratory. He had a two-story building. And he began to manufacture his own medicines. And it was called, it actually just said, Eli Lilly Kim Kimist over the door.

It was not like a catching name, but then he'd never changed it so I guess it worked. So he started out his business and his big thing was that during the Civil War he observed a lot of the medics using medicines and doctors using medicines that he knew weren't working from his chemistry training. He was like, well, that doesn't do anything. That was fake. I mean, a lot of the medicine was.

And so he wanted to use, he said, I really want to make medicines that work and do something. He had good intentions. And so he started with quinine, which is a real medicine, right? He observed quinine is good for malaria. I want to manufacture it and sell it. And of course, quinine was used for lots of other things that it didn't necessarily treat. But he really did start off with a real medicine,

and that was great, and that made some money, but not enough. And so then he started making fake medicines like everybody else. All right. And some things were just like helpful innovations. He was the first one to come up with like gel-coated pills and capsules that made things easier to swallow. That's good. That was good.

He came up with like fruit flavorings for medicine and sugar-coating pills and that kind of thing so that it was easier for like kids to take them. So that's good. Yeah, good. Good. And it's good that you're thinking about kids taking medicine bad and that it probably was still like opium right

Mother's little helpers But But in addition to that he also was making a lot of the kind of like Handrolled pills and compounds and el also was making a lot of the kind of like hand-rolled pills and compounds and elixirs that a lot of the other, I mean, honestly, Pat and medicine salesmen and women of the time were making. So there were a lot of like, if you look through an Eli-Lili-Lili catalog of their medications from the early years, they're not that different than a lot of the other Pat and medicines that

he was kind of against when he first started out. One was called Suckus Alterans. One of the great Harry Potter spells. Or it's an alternative juice is the other name. That's very good. A Suckus is a fluid, like a gastric juice is what they were referencing. Gross. I know.

It's like mine better, the whimsy and everything. But he started telling that and that was like their big, that was actually a bigger seller than coin-line. The real medicine. It was supposed to be used for purifying the blood and the liver, whatever that meant. And there were a lot of things like that. This is just a liver toxin.

It's good for your liver, take it. And really what it was was various herbal things in a bunch of alcohol. So it was like 24% alcohol. Nice. So it worked. And then I mean, it had some like poke weed in there. It had some bird-ock.

It had some prickly ash, but it was mainly alcohol. And people loved it. And it was very... I would think, yeah. It was very popular for... For drinking? For syphilitic afflictions. Like sobriety. No, like syphilitic afflictions? Like sobriety.

No, like syphilis. Some people with syphilis are so brown-adabed. He would, and then they also started to say, like, well, you know, our patients with syphilis seem to love it, and they've also let us know that it's really good for their rheumatism, and it's really good for other skin conditions, so you can use this stuff and put it all over you if you want to at the same time for your eczema or psoriasis or whatever. It's mainly alcohol. Put it wherever you want. We don't care.

The dose of this, by the way, was either 1 teaspoon three times a day or 1 tablespoon three times a day, or one tablespoon three times a day, four, two months, or three months, or eight months, or you keep taking it forever and at some point switch to once every other week. Just feel your way through. Just your gut. Whatever you think is working, it's working.

And if it's not, just take more. Sure. So that was their biggest seller. They also sold some other things like laxatives were very popular at this point in history. They're always popular, right? Everybody always loves laxatives. They sold laxatives and people loved them

because right away you knew it worked. Or it didn't, and you didn't buy it. But they were selling scented-based laxatives, like elixir purgans, which would work. It had scented in it, yes. And the doses were like, it's funny because they have different doses based on, do you want it to just like, how busy is

your schedule? Do you need to be regular? Do you need a cleaning? Or do you want it coming out both ends? You just build up. You need an excuse to finish your book. Are you hiding from your wife and children in the bathroom? Oh, wow. To get a break. Is that what that meant? What's the next thing you're going to... They also sold all kinds of pills with ingredients that at the time would have been very common. You found Beledana, Morphean, Cocaine, Stric Nine, just a whole catalog full of, mainly these were the active ingredients

in varying amounts mixed together in some alcohol. And named something that sounded effective. And that was mainly the catalog. And again, like this is not a strange thing for a drug company at the time to have these kinds of things in their library. It was included, all of these things were included in the United States Pharmacopia at the time, as legitimate drugs that were used for various afflictions.

And among them, another that I haven't mentioned was cannabis. Cannabis was a very popular drug. and among them another that I haven't mentioned was cannabis. Cannabis was a very popular drug. That's illegal here, right? Oh crap. So, Joe, just kidding. Just kidding. I only do kidding.

No, we didn't fly anywhere. We're just driving. Yeah, we're just driving in a bus. It's fine. Everything just driving in a bus. It's fine. Everything's legal in a bus. That is since the medicines, the estimate my God before the mouth. Now the thing about this, this cannabis part of the story. Cannabis is a big part of the Eli Lilly story, but for some reason, Eli Lilly

representatives don't like to talk about it. They don't like to go over it. Like, if you read, and I've read now several accounts of the history of Eli Lilly, you won't find any mention of their cannabis operations in the early years. And this is strange, because again, this wasn't just them. Like all the major pharmaceutical companies were also selling weed alongside all their other medicines or not medicines that they were selling. But this has become like an obsession and a fascination for someone in particular.

This is how I found this story. This gentleman named Fred Fininger, who's a former attorney who started working as an Eli Lilly diversification and analyst, whatever that means. And he holds a bunch of shares in Eli Lilly. And he was always vehemently anti-drug. And then he knew somebody who used marijuana to manage their pain and he saw that it was really effective.

And so now he's become very pro marijuana. Now he'll tell you, he doesn't use it. He just wants it to be a medicine that everybody else can use if they need it. Wink. Wink. And it's funny, because if you read descriptions, everything I read kept referring to him is like,

when you see him, he's a distinguished gentleman and a blue blazer and he's very much a Marion County Republican. We thought you all might know what that meant. But he really wants Eli Lilly to talk about how they loved weed. It's like a friend you went to college with that smoked every day, and you try to give them to talk about it later in front of their kids. That's not really me anymore. I'm not blazy Bob. I'm just Robert, the father of Rebecca and Stephen.

So this story largely, he has dug up and unearthed and shared with the world just because he really wants everybody to know, like, I own shares in Eli Lilly and they used to love pot. And it's true. In the late 1800s, when everybody else was also on the cannabis bus and selling it for a variety of things, like I said, it was in the pharmacope of the United States. You could find listed marijuana for gout, rheumatism, tetanus, cholera, convulsions, hysteria, hemorrhage, whatever, pain, anything. It was sold and used for everything.

And so it was a legitimate medication. And there was a particular member of the Eli Lilly Company that was really interested in all the things that it can do and thought, you know what, this could be like a big part of our business. You know, we've got the Qwai'n'ine, good. We've got a bunch of fake stuff. That's good. We will love that. It's all an outlaw.

But we need to sell more cannabis products. And right as World War I occurred, it became really difficult to import cannabis, which is what a lot of people were doing. They were importing cannabis from outside the US, and it became really difficult, and so they started to think, well, instead of importing it, why don't we just start growing our own?

We can grow marijuana. We got the funds. That's what you need, right? You need the science. You gotta know how to grow some weed, and you need the money to have the land, like have an operation. And so, first in 1907, you can find that the Philadelphia

College of Pharmacy, which was the nation's first pharmacy school, approved a doctoral thesis that was called the Comparative Physiological Effects of Several Varieties of Cannabis Sativa. And it was authored by Eli Lilly, grandson of Eli Lilly, who was fascinated, and I mean went about in a very scientific way to find a new better strain of marijuana that he could grow,

like a homegrown American 100% made in the USA. Love that, so important. Cannabis, that they could grow and start making medications out of and sell since it was getting so cumbersome to import stuff. And so in 1912, the Eli Lilly Corporation bought a ton of land. It was like a farm that the family used to own back in Greenfield. He bought a bunch of land in Greenfield and turned it into fields of marijuana.

Hence the name that resides this day. There is a huge like stucco, it's like a Spanish style kind of building there at what was called lily farms. Like beautiful like red tile and all this, that where they would like house the operations right next to the farms where they were growing all of the marijuana. You can still, by the way, that building still stands. I don't think there is any mention of the fact

that this used to be where we grew a ton of weed, but it is there. And they started like cultivating these different things. They actually worked with another corporation, Park Davis, which was the precursor to Pfizer. So basically, Pfizer and Eli Lilly got together and grew great weed. They're very chill time, a very chill time in American history. Yeah. And like by their 1927 Lilly catalog of all their products and everything they were selling, they had like 23 different products based on cannabis that they had grown on their farms and were selling for all kinds of different things. So it was a huge part of their business. They'd invested a ton of time and money and science and effort and belief into getting cannabis to the people. And you could get, so it was $6 a pint,

which is a wild way, by the way. I don't know, I don't know anybody who sells cannabis by the pint. But for $6 a pint, you could get some cannabis sativa, which was way cheaper than the imported cannabis that they were bringing in before. So it was also, it was out competing the imported cannabis that was still coming into the country.

And in the early 1900s, they went on to cultivate cannabis at a whole other, they bought Conor Prairie. So they had like three, they had like three different locations where they were selling their own strain of cannabis and selling all these drugs. And it was great for a very short period of time. Oh, no, Sid. I know, I know.

Which is the story? You had to see this coming, though. And this story, I mean, we're talking about you, Ilylie, because we're here. But this would be the same for any of these major companies. We're even smaller companies and farms and chemists and drug manufacturers at the time. We're finding new better ways to grow cannabis and which strains were good for what? And what strength and how best to deliver it? You know, different, not just smoking other ways to take in cannabis.

They were doing all this and everybody got freaked out about marijuana. It was around the same time, well, no, they did. It was around the same time as prohibition. Everybody was really upset about alcohol, and people started to get really nervous about everybody getting high, and you started to see, that way this is kind of like,

we're kind of like refer madness kind of, like people getting all worried, like what's it gonna do? Everybody's taking cannabis, I don't know, and, reefer madness, kind of like people getting all worried, like, what's it gonna do? Everybody's taking cannabis, I don't know. And you started to see the government respond with more regulations. And in 1937, they passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which made it so expensive to grow and produce

and sell any of these cannabis based products that they just kind of abandoned it, because it just wasn't, I mean, you could make money. The government doesn't want you to have fun. There it is, folks. I mean, that is true. So at that point, Lily, they just had to make the financial decision,

like, well, this is, you know, we have all, we've invested all this, but there's no way we can possibly make money. So they shut down the operation. They stopped growing marijuana. I think Lily Farms became an animal health company, a Lanko, a Lanko. A Lanko. And so that is where that used to be

where the marijuana fields were. No more. I assume. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know. We haven't been there. Maybe look around. I don't know.

They can't have gotten all of it, right? Right. Of course, Eli Lilly, the company, did fine for itself gotten all of it, right? I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that.

I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that.

I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. And like, make medicine that works. And especially from the American Medical Association,

the AMA, started to put pressure on, you know, through their lobbying with the government. Like, hey, look, they're just selling all this cocaine. And like, that's great. People love it. But there's probably other things. There may be a downside that we haven't even seen. So at that point, Eli Lilly hired their first researcher.

Wait, does it work? Hold on. Let me back up. So and at that point, they started to, at that time, with the anti-conversation, hey, did this work? How would I know? So, they started to actually like research medications

that one of the first things they did was actually partner with two scientists from the University of Toronto, Banting and Best, who had just started to synthesize this pancreatic extract that was doing wonders for diabetic patients, because it was insulin. And so... Some fans, they're right. Love that stuff.

You know what I mean? It's just occurring to me, man, I should really think about these things ahead of time. The first researcher they hired was named George Henry Alexander Clos. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Is that Clos, right?

Clos? Clos? Is that? Like, Blues Clos. Yes, thank you. Oh, Blues. Is that? That's what we were trying to ascertain whether or not it was like Clos.

It's got me, right? It's got me, the same cat, right? That we're trying to ascertain whether or not it was like You're right. It's gonna be the same cat right? We're sitting in it But maybe not are there a lot of clues around around? You know what we can't do this you're not Wikipedia you pay to be here. I should have Wikipedia did We'll get back to you Next time I'll give me to Google it? I'm ready for a show.

No, it's gotta be right. Let's go with it. I'll get it in editing. Don't tell anybody who wasn't here tonight. Right. When you listen to this at home, there'll be a very smart sounding part here. Yeah.

Anyway, so they partnered with Bantene Best from Toronto and they started producing insulin, which obviously is a real medication that works, should be a lot more affordable. Eli, li, li. Not just their fault, but them too. And they started making that. And then after that, in the 40s, when penicillin was discovered, they were part of the first companies that started

manufacturing penicillin. And obviously, these were real medicines that really helped people and really legitimized them as a force. And I don't think I need to tell you that Eli Lilly is obviously a very big drug company now that sells, still sells humulin and they sell pros act and all kinds of other medications that you've heard of and they're the largest corporation in Indiana but they're also the largest charitable benefactor

so. So at least we can expect from capitalism but okay that's good. Just admit that you used to sell a lot of weed. That's all we're asking. Just say it. I mean, it is worth noting that, as I said, like the insulin part of this, we've had this insulin since like the 30s guys. Like it doesn't have to be this expensive. We've known about it for a long time.

Just saying, it's not new. But this cannabis story, I felt like it was important to share with everyone. Because one, there was a long time where we were actually trying to figure out what can we do with cannabis as a legitimate medicine. And then we stopped because we made it a scheduled on drug

that we can't do anything with, because once it's schedule one, you can't give it to people, because that would be unethical. So we can't do any good experiments to see what all it can do for people. But if we could reschedule it, then we could.

And then we would know what it would do. And then we could try it for the things that it works for. Reschedule it doesn't look as good on a bumper sticker. We agree. Well, I mean, science is where it starts. The research is the first part, which is what kindly Fred Feninger said when he introduced at the annual shareholders meeting

of Eli Lilly last year. A resolution to one, he just wanted everybody to recognize the history of Eli Lilly growing lots of weed. And so that's all admit that we did just used to grow a lot of weed. That's all my resolution. That's really he stood up at the shareholders meeting and just read the history. I just want you all to know. And then two, he said, and I would ask, as a shareholder, could you lobby the government to reschedule marijuana

so that Eli Lilly can continue its research in this area and start selling it again? And apparently, it was voted down. Oh, well, hey, we'll get him next year. Hey, maybe next year. Maybe next year, folks, there's always next year. Hey, thank you so much for joining us here. Indianaapolis.

There is, we owe a great debt to the tax payers for the Youth Law Medicine, as the intern outro of our program. Thank you to Paul Suborn for all of his assistants here this evening. And we are going to be back in a moment with my brother, my brother, me. all of his assistants here this evening. And we are going to be back in a moment with my brother, my brother and me. There's going to be a brief intermission at which point you can help yourself to the restroom. But please do that. Please use the bathroom.

Please buy some stuff. And please buy a book on Amazon. It's called The Salmon's Book. That is going to do it for us this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. And it's always don't drill a hole in your head! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Alright!