John Jacob Abel to successfully isolate the neutral base of epinephrine by adding ammonium to highly concentrated extract, a method Abel himself tried but failed due to the use of low concentration of extract. After Takamine's success, Abel himself remarked, with great candor, "The efforts of years on my part in this once mysterious field of suprarenal, medullary biochemistry, marred by blunders as they were, eventuated, then, in the isolation of the hormone not in the form of the free base but in that of its monobenzoyl derivative." Together with L.G. Rowntree and B.B. Turner, Abel devised what they called a "vividiffusion" apparatus,
John Abel the Wye to him. In 1645, during the middle of the civil war, Abel was in Hereford when the Scots besieged it. With Charles I and his soldiers inside the city walls, mills were important to ensure the food supply lasted, and powder mills to make gunpowder. The Roundheads had burnt down the mills the town had previously owned. However, Abel was able to design and build another one. Records differ but because of this the King granted Abel the title of either Master Carpenter or the King's Carpenter. Sir Barnabus Scudamore went further in his estimation of Abel, saying