Diabetes: 125 years ago the creator of insulin was born
November 14, 2016 is World Diabetes Day . It is also the birthday of insulin creator Frederick Banting. 2 important events that even Google wanted to highlight with a Doodle.
Discovery of insulin
Insulin was discovered by Frederick Banting in 1921 (1) . Living primarily in Canada, Banting was a surgeon and orthopedic teacher at the University of Western Ontario. He quickly became interested in previous work by several researchers who had come to the conclusion that diabetes was caused by a deficiency of a hormone secreted by the islets of Langerhans. It was then that this hormone was given a name: insulin.
Frederick Banting then decided to look into this so-called hormone, with the help of several colleagues, in particular with a student named Charles Herbert Best. Together, they succeeded in 1921 in manufacturing purified insulins which could be used in the treatment of diabetes , aided by the chemist James Collip, among others, and under the direction of John James Richard Macleod, at the University of Toronto.
It was in 1922, on January 11, that the first patient, a 14-year-old teenager, Leonard Thomson, received the first dose of insulin. Despite a failure, and after hard and fairly quick work by the team, the patient received other doses of insulin, this time effective and allowing him to save his life . The cure for diabetes had just been discovered.
The man of many awards
Frederick Banting received many honors during his lifetime. Before the discovery of insulin, he had already graduated Master Degree with a gold medal. Following his discovery, he received in 1923 he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with his colleague John James Richard Macleod. They shared the reward money with their 2 other colleagues.
He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, United Kingdom.
The man of many discoveries
Frederick Banting was not content in his career to discover insulin. He continued a lot of research and discovered, among other things , the origin of the discomfort of airplane pilots during recovery maneuvers, which is the consequence of the redistribution of blood in favor of the legs, to the detriment of the brain. A great advance in the field of aviation medicine.
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