however, was the provision for adequate laboratory facilities. His appointment 

 to the Professorship of Pharmacology went into effect for the academic year 

 starting in the autumn of 1893 and with it Abel reluctantly also assumed the 

 responsibility of giving the course in physiological chemistry. Before assuming 

 his duties he obtained a few months of leave to complete some research with 

 Drechsel and to consult his old teachers in Europe. 



What was it that caused Abel to make such effort and sacrifices 

 for this very advanced education, and how was it that he showed 

 such extraordinarily good judgment in choosing the men with whom 

 he worked and in training himself along the lines which he did? That 

 he was not content with a safe and respectable position as Superin- 

 tendent of Public Schools in a small city shows that at an early age 

 he was in some way inspired to go further. Was it his association with 

 Vaughan or Sewall at the University of Michigan which led him to 

 go to the Johns Hopkins University under Newell Martin, and was 

 it Martin who suggested that he take up medicine? Regardless of who 

 may have given him such ideas or advice, it is obvious that Abel was 

 no ordinary student but one filled with an intense desire for the best. 

 His ability at the time of his studying medicine, to choose the best 

 men in the world, was no mere accident, but this trait continued 

 throughout his long life, and when his life is written in full, it will be 

 found that the greatest men of these times were among his friends 

 and correspondents. 



In these days it is difficult for us to comprehend the difference 

 which existed in 1885 between medical science in Europe and in this 

 country. Here, biological chemistry was not then sufficiently differ- 

 entiated from physiology to warrant the formation of a separate group 

 of biochemists, and pharmacology did not exist. It is safe to say that 

 chemistry was hardly known to the clinicians, who at about that time 

 were beginning to take up the new field of pathology. As late as 1911 

 Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz, then Professor of Theory and Practice at 

 the Harvard Medical School, who was one of the outstanding men in 

 clinical medicine in those days, advised me strongly not to take up 

 chemistry in relation to medicine. He said he realized that someday 

 it was coming into medicine but that he had watched it all his life and 

 was sure that it never would amount to much in my day. Yet twenty- 

 five years before this. Dr. Abel with his medical training and medical 

 degree realized the importance of chemistry and specialized in it. He 

 was probably one of the very rare men in this country who then had 

 anything like this training, and it was this knowledge, which others 

 did not have and could only partially appreciate, that had a great deal 

 to do with the foresight attributed to him. He had worked in Europe 



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