SIR HENRY SOLOMAN WELLCOME (1853 - 1936)

Location: 2 miles south of Almond on County Highway J



Sir Henry Soloman Wellcome, key figure in the development of pharmaceutics 
and the promotion of medical research, was born to Yankee settlers on a 
hardscrabble farm in the vicinity of Almond, Wisconsin, where he spent the 
first eight years of his life. Wellcome moved with his family to Minnesota 
in 1861 and was later educated in pharmacy schools in Chicago and 
Philadelphia. In 1880 he went to London, England, where he and Silas 
Mainville Burroughs formed a business partnership creating Burroughs 
Wellcome and Company to manufacture and market a new, compressed form of 
American medicine: pills. Sir Henry later established the Wellcome Chemical 
and Physiological Laboratories, among the first medical research institutes 
in the pharmaceutical industry. Eventually, Wellcome researchers helped 
discover new treatments for diseases such as diptheria, yellow fever, 
malaria, leprosy and sleeping sickness. Wellcome's collection of rare 
medical manuscripts form the basis for the Wellcome Institute for the 
History of Medicine in London. A naturalized British citizen, Sir Henry was 
knighted in 1932. The Wellcome Trust, established in England after Sir 
Henry's death in 1936, is recognized as one of the world's great 
benefactors of medical research and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in the 
United States has supported medical research since 1955.