that he had an assistant as early as 1880. Dr. Fred N. Baker (B.S. Cornell '78, Michigan '80m) acted as his assistant in 1880-81. The name of Dr. John G. Kennan (Western Reserve '79, Michigan '81m) appeared in the Calendar of 1881-82 with the title, Assistant to the Professor of Materia Medica and Ophthalmic and Aural Surgery.
In 1882 Dr. Kennan was succeeded by Dr. Harold Gifford (Cornell '79, Michigan '82m, A.M. hon. '12); in 1883 the post was occupied by Dr. Charles Marshall Frye ('82m), who was succeeded in 1884 by Dr. Arthur E. Owen.
The name of Victor Clarence Vaughan (Mt. Pleasant College [Mo.] '72, Ph.D. Michigan '76, '78m, LL.D. '00) appeared in the list of those teaching in the department in 1883-84, when to his duties as Professor of Physiology and Pathological Chemistry were added those of Associate Professor of Therapeutics and Materia Medica. Vaughan was associated with the department for three years with this title; Dr. Owen remained as his assistant for two years and then was succeeded by Dr. John Heman Andrus ('85m).
In 1887 Dr. Conrad Georg, Sr. ('72m), was appointed Instructor under Dr. Frothingham, and Dr. Thomas Charles Phillips ('85, '87m) was Assistant. The following year (1888-89) was the last in which Dr. Frothingham remained with the department. In 1889-90 Dr. Georg took entire charge of instruction in the subject. This was an important year in the history of the department, as it was the last in which the old subject of materia medica was taught as such, for in the following year the new subject of pharmacology was brought to this country, and to the University, by John Jacob Abel. In the last year under Georg, Materia Medica was a course completed in the first year, and Therapeutics was given in the second year.
Pharmacology in the modern sense in the University of Michigan may be said to date from July, 1890, when the Regents established the chair of materia medica and therapeutics in the Department of Medicine and Surgery and appointed John J. Abel to this new chair as Lecturer, at an annual salary of $2,000. In June, 1891, Abel was appointed Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. The Regents chose to retain the old title of materia medica and therapeutics for the new chair rather than to adopt the name "pharmacology." In this way they linked the new science with the old historical subject which had been taught in this school since it was opened in 1850, and with the name which had been employed to designate this older subject since the days of Dioscorides.
John Jacob Abel ('83, M.D. Strassburg '88) was born in Cleveland in 1857. Before his graduation from the Literary Department of the University in 1883, he withdrew to become principal of the LaPorte High School, LaPorte, Indiana, for three years. When he returned, while finishing his senior work, he was an assistant to Victor C. Vaughan during the first semester and to Henry Sewall, Professor of Physiology, in the second. He then went abroad and studied in various European universities. While still engaged in these studies, in 1888-89, he received a cablegram from Vaughan offering him the professorship of pharmacology in the Department of Medicine and Surgery. Acting on the advice of the biochemist, von Nencki, of Bern, with whom he was working at the time, he accepted the call and arranged to begin his new duties in January, 1891. In his first lecture he told of his recent visit to Berlin, where he had spent some weeks investigating the new remedy, tuberculin, which Koch had recently introduced for the treatment of tuberculosis.
