Book Review

The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline

N Engl J Med 1993; 328:1650-1651June 3, 1993

Article

The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline
By John Parascandola. 212 pp., illustrated. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. $32.50. ISBN: 0-8018-4416-9

Based on extensive archival research, this book provides valuable insight into the intellectual and institutional origins of pharmacology in America. Rather than reviewing theories, methods, or discoveries, Parascandola describes the professionalization of experimental pharmacology. Like experimental pathology and physiology, this field was patterned after programs established in European universities during the second half of the 19th century.

John Jacob Abel, an American medical graduate who spent several years working with leading European physiologists and pharmacologists, was primarily responsible for establishing the discipline of experimental pharmacology in America. Parascandola organizes his book around Abel's career. This is reasonable when one considers Abel's contributions to the field and his role as an innovator and mentor.

Abel was hired in 1893 as the first professor of pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Medical scientists at Johns Hopkins were required to devote their whole time to teaching and research, an important innovation in American medical education. This institutional ethic and other features unique to the new medical school promoted Abel's career and fostered his role as a discipline builder. A productive investigator, Abel made several important scientific contributions, including the isolation of epinephrine, the preparation of crystalline insulin, and the development of an apparatus that was a precursor of modern hemodialysis equipment.

The professionalization of pharmacology in America occurred in the context of the reform of medical education around the turn of the century. Soon, however, employment opportunities arose for pharmacologists outside medical schools and universities. Schools of dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine, and pharmacy hired pharmacologists to teach lecture courses and direct laboratory exercises that incorporated new principles and experimental techniques. The Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 catalyzed the entry of experimental pharmacologists into government service. At about the same time, pharmaceutical firms began hiring pharmacologists, assuming that their familiarity with modern pharmacologic principles and laboratory techniques would lead to the development of new, effective, and profitable remedies.

Of necessity, pharmacologists in government and industry were more concerned with applied pharmacology than were their former academic colleagues. This led to tensions within the new specialty of experimental pharmacology. For example, industry pharmacologists were excluded until 1941 from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. This society, organized by Abel in 1908, reflected the emergence of pharmacology as a discipline in this country. Further evidence of the maturation of the field was the inauguration one year later of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Abel, with Christian Herter and Carl Voegtlin, founded this journal -- another example of his profound influence on the field.

Parascandola concludes with a discussion of the dynamic nature of the field in recent years, when clinical pharmacology and molecular pharmacology emerged as distinct subdisciplines. This pioneering study of the development of American pharmacology includes several hundred references to primary and secondary sources, a name-and-subject index, and a useful bibliographic essay. Although it is somewhat brief (152 pages of text), the book is an important contribution to the literature of medical history and professionalization.

W. Bruce Fye, M.D., M.A.
Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI 54449