degree, but a broad scientific education, and Avas prepared tor scien- 

 tific medicine in a way which in this country was only recognized as 

 the correct one some thirty or forty years later. 



Also, there can be little doubt that at this time Abel had a clear 

 vision of what a tremendous role chemistry was to play in the future 

 of scientific medicine. Irrespective of the expense, which he could 

 ill afford, he determined to be prepared for this coming development. 

 While in Europe in 1889, he frequently mentions in his letters the 

 need of medical chemistry in the hospitals in this country and wants 

 to come back to the States with some entirely "new line" of work 

 as well as to get "ready for the twentieth century." Although many 

 of his colleagues at that time thought his ideas absurd and visionary, 

 everyone now realizes how justified this vision of his in regard to 

 chemistry in medicine was. 



Very soon after coming to the Hopkins in 1893, his interest de- 

 veloped in the glands of internal secretion (the endocrine glands) 

 and indeed in the isolation of their active principles or hormones. 

 He first tackled the thyroid gland and was busily engaged on this 

 project when news of Baumann's work on the iodine-containing iodo- 

 thyroglobulin came out. He stopped the thyroid work, but soon be- 

 came interested in the hormone of the adrenal medulla, which had a 

 remarkable blood-pressure-raising action. 



When one considers the tremendous importance in medicine of 

 this field of the endocrines (or hormones) at the present time, one 

 can only think of Abel's early interest as prophetic. It is now well 

 recognized that the key to many problems connected with each endo- 

 crine gland is to be found in the isolation of the pure active principle. 

 That he early appreciated the importance of stich contributions is 

 shown by the foUo^ving sentence in one of his addresses: "The actual 

 finding of definite and specific chemical principles in the organs of 

 internal secretion has in each case an importance in the way of ex- 

 plaining and correlating a large number of disconnected facts, only 

 to be likened to the discovery of the etiological cause of an infectious 

 disease." He was fond of emphasizing the importance of the powerful 

 drugs present in the human body in the aphorism, "We are walking 

 drug stores." 



To rettirn to Abel's first published research on the hormones, it 

 is well known that in 1897, he isolated the active principle or hormone 

 of the adrenal medulla in the form of a benzoyl derivative. This was 

 the first instance of the isolation of a hormone of any endocrine gland. 

 Later, the pure substance was isolated without the benzoyl radical. 



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