The Happiest Years (1923–1938)

Abstract

Returning from America, August turned his attention not only to insulin production and capillary physiology but also to getting a larger, better equipped laboratory. On January 10, 1923, he wrote a letter to Dr. Rufus Cole at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York: “I take the liberty to approach you with a proposition which you will perhaps consider extremely preposterous. I am inclined to look upon it in that way myself but on the other hand it might be possible to take it seriously and I venture to believe that it would, if carried out, be of such value in furthering the study of experimental medicine that I feel justified in asking your opinion.” He explained that the rooms in his present laboratory were few, small, and poorly lighted with no room for a library or even for a secretary, as they had to use every inch of space for experimental work. He regretted that there was never enough room for the American graduate students who wished to work with him. With improved laboratory facilities, he felt, it would be possible to increase, probably by 100 percent, “the amount of research work done in my laboratory without in any way lowering its standards.... I am now 48 years old. I am perfectly sound and expect to have about 20 years of useful experimental work before me. I believe that there is a fair chance that I shall repay in scientific work and in training of workers the outlay which it would require to put me in a position in which my capabilities for work could be utilized to the full.”¹

Our gratitude shall be shown by work.