the truth, I have not felt that they were particularly well fitted for it, 

 but Dr. Graham is different. She has upset all of my ideas on the 

 matter, and she is as good if not better than any man whom I have 

 ever had with me in the laboratory." 



Anyone who has read Dr. Abel's work on histamine, the active 

 principle of the pituitary gland, as well as his early work on epi- 

 nephrine, must wonder why Dr. Abel published certain things that 

 he did, why he was apparently in such a hurry about publication, 

 and why he was so vague in his description of his work that it is al- 

 most impossible to repeat it. This seems incompatible with his crit- 

 ical judgment, the exactness which he required of others, and the 

 standards which he set for his own journals. Personally, I think 

 that it was Dr. Abel's terrifically intense interest in the outcome of 

 his work which allowed him to do this. He was so interested in an 

 absolutely honest way that this at times warped his judgment. I 

 know that this was so about his conclusions of the part that histamine 

 played in the activity of the pituitary gland. He would not listen 

 to suggestions made to him by Dr. Marshall and others in the labora- 

 tory but dashed off this paper and published it without showing it to 

 anyone. 



It was very interesting to see the inner workings of The journal of 

 Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at such times as when 

 Dr. Abel got hot on the trail of something in which he was particu- 

 larly interested. Before he reached the end, he would get more 

 and more excited about his work and become suddenly convinced 

 that he was going to settle everything the next day. He would call 

 his secretary, ask for the publishers on the line, and have them hold 

 the next number of the Journal until hearing from him. The entire 

 laboratory would then be upset in an attempt to finish his w^ork and 

 rush a publication through. Every time the expected result was not 

 found, and after a considerable delay of the Journal, Dr. Abel would 

 reluctantly give the order to print the next number without his con- 

 tribution. When a piece of work was really ready to be written up, 

 the procedme was very different and involved weeks of poring over 

 endless periodicals by Dr. Abel and his associates. Certainly no one 

 would accuse him of having done this superficially. 



I cannot go into details of the pituitary controversy, but after the 

 finding that histamine was not the internal secretion of the pituitary 

 gland and the finding by others suggesting that there were at least 

 tTVo, if not more, active principles rather than the one which he had 

 postulated. Dr. Abel set out to sho^v that his opponents could not be 



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