cance of what had happened and had such a vision of the future that 

 the miracles of the next decade might not have surprised him if 

 he had lived to see them. This breadth of vision in foreseeing im- 

 portant developments of medicine was one of the qualities which was 

 responsible for much of Abel's success and greatness. 



John Jacob Abel belonged to that small group of men who made 

 up the first faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and, in 

 addition, was one of the pioneers who helped build up scientific 

 medicine in America to the high place which it now occupies in the 

 world. This is not the place to review Abel's contributions to science, 

 which covered many subjects during a period no less than half a cen- 

 tury. However, I shall try to point out many instances of his prophetic 

 vision in regard to the future developments which were to take place 

 in medicine. 



The life of this first professor of pharmacology in the Johns Hop- 

 kins University began on a farm near Cleveland, Ohio, on the nine- 

 teenth of May, 1857, and ended in Baltimore on May 26, 1938, after 

 a long career in American experimental medicine. His family came 

 from the Rhine Valley of the Palatinate. He had no scientific fore- 

 bears on either side. There is reason to believe that he owed his 

 college education to his initiative 



He received his Ph.B. degree from the University of Michigan in 

 1883, but had an interim of three years in his college course, during 

 which he served as principal of a high school at La Porte, Indiana, 

 Avhere he taught Latin, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Abel 

 must have looked back on these years with satisfaction, for it was in 

 La Porte that he met a teacher in his school, whom he once described 

 as a "very sweet, mild little lady with a great deal of force." This 

 lady, Mary Hinman, became his wife and was his companion for fifty- 

 five years. She stood by his side through many tribulations and en- 

 couraged her husband to acquire a broad medical and scientific edu- 

 cation. There can be no doubt that Abel's happy family life was a 

 potent factor in his scientific career. 



After graduation, Abel set his course definitely for scientific medi- 

 cine as his life's work. Two things which he did at that time indicate 

 his ability to see what scientific medicine was to be like in the future. 

 He submitted himself to a prolonged, broad, fundamental training, 

 which consisted of a year with Newell Martin in physiology at the 

 Johns Hopkins and then seven years with some leading teachers in 

 the medical schools of Europe. He thus acquired not only a medical 



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