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At the beginning of 1928, Professor E. P. Pick, head of the Institute of Pharmacology of the University of Vienna, was looking for a research assistant with a degree in organic chemistry. I had obtained such a degree the previous year by studies which included a year of research in the field of organic arsenic compounds. This had led me to the work of Paul Ehrlich, whose hypotheses on the selective binding of dyes and dyelike arsenic compounds made a deep impression on me. Pharmacology seemed therefore to be the right subject for me: I applied for the post and obtained it. At that time Pick was interested in the findings of several workers that extracts of duodenal mucosa produce a hypoglycemic effect and that they do so even when given by mouth. The latter statement was of special interest to him because a friend of his, Msgr. Ignaz Seipel, formerly a professor of theology in the University of Vienna and thus a colleague of his, and later Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, was a diabetic and had complained to him about the discomfort caused by the injection, several times daily, of soluble insulin, the only preparation then available. I was able to confirm that extract of the upper third of the small intestine lowered the blood sugar of rabbits when given parenterally and that the dried extract when given in very much larger doses was also orally active.