well illustrated by incidents which occurred during his efforts to 

 isolate in pure form the hormone of the posterior pituitary gland. 

 An assistant who was testing Abel's preparations for pharmacological 

 activity tells me that after he had tested dozens of preparations and 

 found them all inactive, Abel would come to him with a new one and 

 confidently say, "I've got it this time." After an evening of testing, 

 the assistant informed Abel the next morning that the preparation 

 was completely inactive and was greeted, "It's probably left in the 

 mother liquor. We'll be sure to get it next time." This abiding faith, 

 optimism, and enthusiasm in spite of great difficulties and disappoint- 

 ments marked Abel's career. 



In 1913, Abel became interested in a potential method for the re- 

 moval of diffusible substances from the circulating blood of living 

 animals by dialysis. At the first inception of the work, he discussed 

 his idea and plans with his staff at the luncheon table. The author 

 can clearly recall this particular luncheon meeting. The professor used 

 small cylinders of bread to illustrate how the apparatus was to be 

 made and talked glibly about how this "artificial kidney" would be 

 valuable to provide means for the removal of substances detrimental 

 to the body in order to relieve the kidneys of their function and tide 

 over a crisis. At this conception of the idea, he clearly saw the possi- 

 bility of the use of his "artificial kidney" as a therapeutic measure for 

 man. 



The task was to pass the blood of an animal from an artery through 

 a series of collodion tubes surrounded by saline solution back into 

 a vein. Many technical difficulties had to be overcome but in No- 

 vember, 1913, the first successful experiment was performed on a 

 rabbit. [See illustration between pages 16 and 17.] When the "old 

 man" talked of the clinical application of the measure for the treat- 

 ment of intoxications or to tide over when the kidneys were not func- 

 tioning, his associates, including the author, considered him a bit of a 

 visionary. In 1926, Haas of Giessen actually used an "artificial kidney" 

 on three htmian patients. It was not, however, until 1946 that Kolff in 

 Holland and Murray in Toronto were able to put the "artificial 

 kidney" on what appears to be a workable basis. Great technical im- 

 provement has been made, but the idea and general principles are 

 the same as those developed by Abel a third of a century before. 



In connection with his studies on the "artificial kidney," Abel found 

 from experiments on dogs that very large quantities of blood can be 

 withdrawn repeatedly, if the red corpuscles of the blood are separated 

 and reinjected in salt solution. The paper (1914) dealing with this 



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