Indianapolis

Hook's Drug Store Museum, located at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, offers visitors an immersive journey into an authentic late 19th-century Indiana drugstore, faithfully recreated from an outstanding collection of pharmaceutical antiques dating from the 1870s-1900s era. Opened in August 1966 to commemorate Indiana's sesquicentennial, the museum was created by Hook's Drug Stores vice president James M. Rogers, who collected drugstore fixtures from throughout the state. The museum features some of the most beautiful pre-Civil War cabinets anywhere in the United States, including stunning walnut and ash cabinets originally installed in Cambridge City, Indiana. Housed in a 1927 bungalow-style building originally constructed for the Better Babies Contests, the museum showcases the dramatic progress in medicinal science over the past 150 years, including the rise of patent medicines and efforts to regulate fraudulent medical claims. The fully functional soda fountain, dating from about 1877, continues to serve thousands of ice cream sodas and phosphates, maintaining the authentic drugstore experience where healing, community, and commerce once intersected. Since opening, an estimated three million visitors have experienced this nationally acclaimed attraction, which operates as both a museum and a limited-scale functioning drugstore.

America's oldest surviving pathology facility featuring historic pathology equipment, extensive apothecary jars, and over 120 medicinal plant species in their therapeutic garden. The Indiana Medical History Museum is housed in the United States' oldest surviving pathology laboratory, the Old Pathology Building constructed in 1896 on the grounds of the former Central State Hospital for the Insane. This remarkable 19-room brick facility was considered state-of-the-art when built, featuring a 150-seat teaching amphitheater, bacteriological and chemical research facilities, autopsy room, medical library, anatomical museum, three clinical laboratories, and a photography laboratory all designed to support research into the physical causes of mental disease. The museum represents the beginning of scientific psychiatry and modern medicine, with the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons and Indiana University School of Medicine conducting lectures here from 1900 to 1956. Established in 1969 as a preservation museum, it maintains the authentic appearance and original equipment from when the hospital ceased operations, offering visitors an immersive journey through 19th and early 20th-century medical practices. The museum also features a medicinal plant garden and a 1950s doctor's office exhibit, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Notable figures include administrator George F. Edenharter (1893-1923) who commissioned the building, and neurologist Walter Bruetsch who specialized in central nervous system syphilis research during the 1920s and 1930s.