hour. Everyone had his OAvn idea as to why this happened. When 

 they did die, they died at almost the same minute each day, but 

 there were certain days on which they did not die at all. This became 

 a problem of almost as much interest as the nature of secretin itself. 

 It was solved, as many other things were in the laboratory, by Charlie 

 Kamphaus, who discovered that the sun came around the corner of 

 the building at the same time each day, shone on the ether bottle, 

 and raised the ether concentration to a lethal level. 



According to Charlie, it was also he who discovered the fact that 

 the liver could concentrate phenoltetrachlorphthalein. Dr. Abel and 

 Dr. Rowntree were working on this substance and studying its pos- 

 sible action as a cathartic. Charlie was cleaning up after one of 

 Dr. Abel's experiments and was about to put the dog in a bucket when 

 he noticed that this dye was pouring out of the bile duct which had 

 accidentally been cut across. He called Dr. Abel's attention to this, 

 and if what he says is so, and ^ve could trust Charlie implicitly, we 

 again have an example of an important medical discovery being made 

 by chance, combined with the foreknowledge and altertness of the 

 observer. 



Although Dr. Abel's experiments on secretin, Witte's peptone, 

 albumoses, and so forth, were painstaking and tedious, they were as 

 nothing compared with his work on the pituitary. The preliminary 

 pituitary extracts were made by Dr. Rouiller, Dr. Helen Graham, 

 or Dr. Gelling and then worked up further by Dr. Abel himself. They 

 were tested either on the blood pressure or on the guinea pig uterus or 

 both, and here again the pharmacological tests were extremely simple 

 and needed no complicated apparatus. By that time more modern 

 methods of doing blood pressures had been introduced into the 

 laboratoi7, and these were run off in great numbers. I well remember 

 Professor Abel's great delight when he managed to get rid of a pre- 

 liminary fall in blood pressure and obtained pituitary fractions which 

 gave nothing but an instantaneous and beautiful rise of pressure. 



The uterine experiments were carried out by Dr. Rouiller, who was 

 a man for whom I had the utmost respect. He was an ideal person 

 for Dr. Abel to have associated with him. He was not only an or- 

 ganic chemist of exceptional ability, but during the years in which he 

 worked with Dr. Abel he was editing the Section on Organic Chem- 

 istry of Chemical A hstracts, and it seemed that there was nothing on 

 earth of which he had not heard. It was Dr. Rouiller who convinced 

 me that it was impossible to have an original idea. Every time I 

 had one, it would not be two days before he would come quietly into 



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