14 HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 



trol my time. However, I came up for my final examinations 

 after the accident at the end of the second year's course, and 

 passed in chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, with the same 

 record as my examinations of the year before. 



The autumn following my second year at college, that is, 

 in August of 1884, I read my first scientific paper before the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, which 

 was meeting that year in Philadelphia. I had worked during 

 the late spring and early summer in the laboratory of Henry 

 Leffman, but I was dissatisfied with the opportunities for the 

 class of work I was doing, for I had become interested in the 

 chemical analyses of plants, and through the advice of scien- 

 tific friends I was introduced to Professor Sadtler, lecturer on 

 chemistry at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. He of-- 

 fered me whatever help he could in the class of work I was 

 then interested in, and placed me as a private student with 

 Professor Henry Trimble, who was in charge of the chemical 

 laboratory at the College of Pharmacy and had made a special 

 study of plant analysis. 



About this time there was published, in English, Dragen- 

 dorff's scheme for the chemical analysis of plants, which was 

 the best systematic method for plant analysis published up 

 to that time. Previously to the appearance of this book, plants 

 had been analyzed in a haphazard sort of way, and simply 

 special methods had been used for the isolation of certain 

 compounds that were suspected to exist in the plants under 

 analysis. 



I was especially interested in the study of Mexican and 

 Central American plants, not only on account of their not hav- 

 ing been much studied up to that time, but because they con- 

 tained substances of interest both scientific and medicinal. 



The facilities for this study were very good in Professor 

 Trimble's laboratory, and the College library was most com- 

 plete in works of reference and journals containing the litera- 

 ture on the subject. My first piece of work at the laboratory 

 was the analysis of the bark of the Mexican candle-tree, bo- 

 tanically known as Fouquieria splendens. This tree is men- 

 tioned in the Mexican Boundary Survey reports. An interest- 



