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Discovery of Insulin
The discovery of insulin is important to Canadian history because it helped saved the lives of many diabetics all over the world. A diabetic is someone who has no pancreas, so they cannot control the sugar in their blood and urine. When the sugar level in their blood and urine was too high, the diabetic would get sick and die. When a diabetic takes insulin, the sugar level in their body would go down, and they would be able to eat again without having to worry about how much sugar they had eaten.
In the begining of summer in 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best were working in a lab in the University of Toronto. In the lab, they would conduct surgeries on dogs, and remove the pancreas, hoping to make the dog become a diabetic. They would then experiment on the dog with the extracts that they had mad, hoping that it would aid the dog with it's diabetic symptoms. The extracts they used had anti-diabetic qualities.
Banting would buy a dog on the market, careful not to let the anti-vivisectionists find out about what they were doing with the dogs. Anti-vivisectionists were a group of people who were against suffering and pain on animals. Frederick Banting would sometimes end up covered in blood, only to have the dog die. Sometimes, the dog would live, but it would not become a diabetic because he had missed a part of the pancreas in the dog during surgery.
Before Charles Best returned from his vacation, Banting realized that all the work done so far, all his experiments and everything done so far would have to be erased. It was all incorrect because his lab helper, Charles Best, had not cleaned the glass ware properly. He and Best got into a fight, and the student nearly got removed from the project, but he had wanted to stay so no one took his place.
Time and time again, Frederick Banting and Charles Best failed to come up with an extract that would lower a diabetic dog's blood sugar.
One day in early August, Banting and Best injected a collie with an extract that had anti-diabetic qualities. The dog's blood sugar lowered, and Banting called the new extract 'Isletin.' Banting and Best continued their work to prove that the 'Isletin' really did lower the dog's blood sugar.
On August 9th, Banting wrote to a man in Scotland named J.J.R Macleod. He explained in his letter that he had created an extract that lowered the sugar level in the blood of a diabetic dog.
But, Banting came to a problem. 'Isletin' was hard to produce, and it took a great deal of time to make.
Near the end of August, Banting sucessfully removed the pancreas of a yellow border collie that they called Number 92. The dog soon after started showing signs of a diabetic. It was later diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus. She began to urinate in her cage a lot, her eyes became clouded and the corners filled with puss. She became listless, and falling into a diabetic coma. Soon she would die. Banting then injected her with 'isletin' and the dog immediatly began showing improvements. Number 92 got up on her haunches, and looked around. Later in the day, after a couple more shots of 'isletin,' the dog's eyes cleared up and the sugar in her urine dissapeared.
Banting and Best looked on, watching closely for signs of regress, but she only continued to improve. Number 92 had no panreas; according to everything they had studied, and every rule in the book, the dog shoulder have been dead.
Two weeks later, Banting asked Best for Isletin, but Best replied, "There is no more." They could not give any extract to 92, and because of that, the dog began to show signs of diabetes. They had to let her die, watching helplessly.
That summer, Banting had little money. He only earned few dollars from performing tonsilectomies and selling his medical instruments for spare cash. He left London, selling his house so he could devote his life to finding a treatment for diabetes.
When J.J.R Macleod returned from his vacation in Scottland, he did not believe Banting's research. But after some persuading, Macleod agreed to improve their working conditions and the University was also persuaded to pay Banting and Best for their findings.
The team found out that if they took the pancreas of a cow fetus sent to the slaughter house, they could make isletin at a quicker pace, and they could make more at once, because a cows pancreas was bigger than a dog's pancreas.
Not longl ater, a doctor named Elliot Joslin heard about their findings. He sent a letter to Macleod, asking about their research. Macleod wrote back, telling that the research they were doing may be of real value to the treatment of diabetes, and that they were hurrying with their experiments and treatment quickly.
In November, Banting injected himself with 'isletin,' under the skin in his arm. There was no reaction, so they assumed the extract to be safe and non-toxic to healthy humans. Banting then contacted an old friend, Joe Gilchrist, a former medical school classmate who had diabetes. In december, Gilchrist swallowed some isletin, but nothing happened. This proved that to sacve lives, Isletin had to be injected and not taken orally.
On december 30th, Banting presented his work to the American Physiological society confrence at Yale University. Some questions, he could not answer, so Macleod and J.B Collip, who joined the team in late 1921, answered most of the questions that he could not. This led to Banting's growing suspicions that Collip and Macleod were trying to steal his work. Another reason for his suspicions, was because Macleod and Collip were friends.
On January 11th, 1922, Banting and Best took the extract, 'isletin,' to the Toronto General Hospital. Not having clinical privilages in the hospital, they had to give the extract to a doctor and wait in the ward. The doctor took the isletin, and injected 15cc into a 14 year old boy, Leonard Thompson, 7.5cc into each buttock. Thompson was the first diabetic to ever use ilsetin. The extract proved no clinical benifits.
Collip believed that the extract was not pure enough to work on humans, so he began to work on purifying the extract. He tested his findings on a rabbit in the lab, but the 'isletin' was too pure, sending the rabbit into a convulsion, known now as an 'Insulin shock.' The antidote for this was to give the patient sugar.
On January 16th, 1922, Collip succeeded in purifying the extract -- this was Insulin.
On January 23rd, Leonard Thompson slipped into a diabetic coma. His doctor gave him 5cc of the purified extract, Insulin, and the boy recovered almost imediately.
Banting tried to ask Collip how he purified the extract, but Collip would not tell him. Best had to pull Banting away from Collip because he had gotten so angry he threw Collip into a chair and tried to beat him. After that incident, Macleod made everyone sign a peace agreement.
Isletin was renamed Insulin because Isletin had no meaning, while Insulin meant 'island' in Latin.
Before Insulin was discovered, many patients went through harsh treatment which involved a strict diet that led to starvation. By early 1923, over 1,000 diabetics were treated with Insulin by more than 250 doctors.