The Science of Diabetes
The Discovery of Insulin
Insulin was discovered by Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto in 1921.
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Charles Best (1899 - 1978) |
Fred Banting was born in Alliston, Ontario on November 14, 1891 and died on February 21, 1941. He attended medical school at the University of Toronto. After medical school he served in World War I. Returning from the war, he continued training in surgery at the University of Toronto and then established a practice on London, Ontario. He taught at the local medical school and while preparing a lecture he wrote his famous note, describing a way to isolate insulin:
"Diabetus Ligate pancreatic ducts of dog. Keep
dogs alive till acini degener-
ate leaving Islets. Try to isolate the internal secretion of these to
relieve glycosurea"
In the summer of 1921 he returned to the University of Toronto and presented his idea to Dr. J.J.R. MacLeod who was the chairman of the Department of Physiology.
(1876 - 1935)
Macleod assigned Banting some lab space and a graduate student, Charles Best. Throughout the summer of 1921, Banting and Best ligated the pancreatic duct of dogs, removed the pancreas and made preparations of the pancreatic extract. After numerous failures, they discovered a substance that lowered the blood sugar of diabetic dogs.
Dr. Macleod had spent the summer in his native Scotland. When he returned to Toronto, Banting and Best showed him what they had found. James Collip was a pharmacologist who was spending a sabatical year in Toronto. MacLeod assigned Collip the task of purifying the extract that Banting and Best had prepared.
James B. Collip
(1892 - 1965)
Within a few months, a preparation of "isletin" was given to a yound child dying of diabetes. Leonard Thompsen was the first human to receive insulin in January 1922. His life was saved and he lived until 1935.
The news of the discovery of insulin spread rapidly around the world.
August Krogh was a Daninsh physiologist and a winner of the Nobel Prize in 1920 for his work on capillary circulation. His wife Marie was a physician who had adult onset diabetes. They were visiting the United States in 1922 and visited Toronto to learn more about the recent discovery of insulin.
August and Marie Krogh
The specifics of their visit are lost to history, but probably set in motion one of the great scientific controversies of the 20th century. Dr. Krogh surely met with Dr. Macleod as they were both working on carbohydrate physiology. Presumably Dr. Krogh met with Banting, but this is not known for certain. Dr. Krogh did receive an agreement to produce insulin in Denmark and he later started the Nordisk Laboratory. What his role was in the Nobel Prize Committee may never be known.
In 1923 the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awared to Banting and Macleod. The work of Best and Collip was not officially recognized. Banting immediately shared his prize with Best and MacLeod shared his with Collip.
Banting served in both World War I and World War II. He was killed in a plane crash on February 21, 1941. Shortly before he died he recorded a Christmas message which you can hear at this site.