John Jacob Abel announces isolation of epinephrine

Background. Adrenaline is normally produced by the adrenal glands and by a small number of neurons in the medulla oblongata. In 1895, George Oliver, a North Yorkshire general practitioner, and Edward Albert Schäfer, a physiologist at University College of London, published a paper reporting that the active component of adrenal gland extract raising blood pressure and heart rate came from the medulla rather than the cortex. Abel, later described as the father of modern pharmacology, prepared an adrenal extract in 1897.

Abel's 1897 Extract and Naming. In 1897, John Jacob Abel of Johns Hopkins University prepared an extract from adrenal glands and coined the name epinephrine, derived from Ancient Greek epí ('upon') and nephros ('kidney'). One account describes him as having found a natural substance produced by the adrenal glands, assigned the molecular formula C17H15NO4. Abel is also recorded as the first chairman of the first US department of pharmacology.

Correction. Later work showed Abel's extract was not the pure hormone. Jōkichi Takamine successfully isolated the neutral base of epinephrine in 1900, creating a substance 2000 times more active. Abel acknowledged his efforts resulted in a derivative, not the free base. The belief that Abel's extract was identical to Takamine's was disputed, leading to 'epinephrine' becoming the generic name in the US.