run down. There can be no doubt whatever but that pharmacology 

 did run down in this country during the latter years of Professor 

 Abel's life, and it is also true that no effort was made by him, during 

 the years that I was in his laboratory, to see to it that assistants Avere 

 put through any sort of training or that a policy of any kind was 

 carried out in relation to the student course. In fact, the Professor 

 used to preach to me against spending too much time on lectures and 

 the organization of pharmacology and advised me to put my efforts 

 into research and let other matters take care of themselves. But was 

 this not the reaction of a man who had been through much himself 

 and had forgotten that others did not have the training which he 

 himself had? 



I do not feel that pharmacology would continue to exist as an 

 entity if all departments were organized as Dr. Abel's was when I was 

 there, for they would not be headed by Abels; but we must not forget 

 that the state of pharmacology in his laboratory was more or less the 

 fault of his assistants rather than of Dr. Abel. He had been through 

 the years of effort which it took to develop the first pharmacological 

 laboratory in this country, a series of lectures and demonstrations as 

 well as laboratory experiments, the organization of a course not only 

 in pharmacology but in toxicology, prescription writing, materia 

 medica, and dosage, and a course in pharmacy given by a group of the 

 best pharmacists in this country. Anyone wishing to obtain an idea 

 of the care with which he did this needs only to read his papers, "On 

 the Teaching of Pharmacology, Materia Medica, and Therapeutics in 

 our Medical Schools" (3), "Report on the Teaching of Pharmacody- 

 namics, in the Report of the Committee on Medical Education of the 

 American Medical Association" (4) and "The Education of the Su- 

 perior Student" (5). There were enough relics of these days in the 

 Pompeian layers of the laboratory drawers to indicate what had been 

 done in the past, but Dr. Abel's primary interest was not in organiza- 

 tion. As soon as he had taken care of the organization of pharma- 

 cology in this country, not only in teaching but in the provision of a 

 journal for the recording of experimental work and a society which 

 would bring pharmacologists together, he left it to others to continue 

 along the line which he had planned and himself turned to research, 

 which he kept emphasizing as the basis of everything worth ^vhile. 



We are apt to think of Abel as a biochemist rather than what many 

 consider a pharmacologist to be. I know that Dr. Abel believed most 

 thoroughly in the method employed by the pharmacologist of using 

 the reaction of the organism in isolating active principles from plants 



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