Avith experienced biological chemists and pharmacologists and had 

 read their journals, all of which impressed upon him the need of 

 similar organizations and publications in this country. His knowl- 

 edge of chemistry allowed him to go more deeply into fundamentals 

 than was possible for many others. Then, too, the whole scientific life 

 of the remarkable group of German medical men who lived at that 

 time made a deep impression on Abel. Their almost monastic devo- 

 tion to medicine, their ability, modesty, the care and exactness with 

 which they did their work in infinite detail, and their desire to find 

 out the truth of matters gave him very high standards for his own 

 development. 



To Professor Abel this group always remained different and above 

 all others. He would speak in a hushed voice of the great Naunyn 

 or the great Nencki, and in a discussion the last word had always to 

 be found in a German reference book or article. This was a great 

 group, and those must have been wonderful times when, as Abel put 

 it, he "walked the wards with v. Recklinghausen." But all of these 

 men and these days have gone, and one wonders whether a professor 

 will ever be as much of a professor as he used to be then, whether the 

 professorial, broad-brimmed, black felt hat will ever again attract 

 the same awe and respect that it did, and whether it will be possible 

 as it then was to determine the departmental rank of a group by 

 their relative positions as they walked down the street. 



Professor Abel's work was largely of a biochemical nature, for ex- 

 ample, that on the chemical composition of the melanins from hair, 

 the occurrence of carbamic acid in alkaline horse urine as well as in 

 human and dog urine, the chemistry of the pigment of the negro's 

 skin and hair, the isolation of ethyl sulfide from the dog's urine, and 

 an attempt to isolate the active principle of the thyroid, his isolation 

 of the active principle of the thyroid, his isolation of the active prin 

 ciple of the adrenal medulla, his work with Ford on the poison oi 

 Amanita phalloides, a study of the active principles of the secretion 

 from the parotid gland of the tropical toad Bufo agua, his classical 

 experiment demonstrating with his "vividiffusion" apparatus the 

 presence of amino acids in the blood. Then there was his work with 

 Pincoffs and Rouiller on the presence of albumoses in the tissues 

 and in the blood as well as in the gastrointestinal mucosa, his work 

 with Gelling on Witte's peptone, as well as that on the active prin- 

 ciples of the pituitary gland, his chemical studies of and isolation of 

 crystalline insulin. These indicate Professor Abel's real interests. His 

 work on the phthaleins and their use in kidney and liver function 



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