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 Jacob Abel to the University of Michigan as the chair of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. There, he played an important role in developing the first pharmacology department in North America. He only was at the University of Michigan until 1893, when William Osler of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine asked Abel to come to the school and accept a Professorship of Pharmacology. At Johns Hopkins, Abel was the chair of pharmacology and biological chemistry, until the departments split in 1908, when Abel became the chair solely of the Department of Pharmacology. At Johns Hopkins, Abel performed his most groundbreaking research and held