One hundred years ago today, on January 11, 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson became the first person to receive a successful insulin injection as a treatment for diabetes. Prior to that, people with Type 1 diabetes did not survive for more than a few weeks or months with the disease.
Thompson's first dose had an apparent impurity which caused an allergic reaction. A refined process was quickly developed to improve the canine pancreas from which the insulin was derived, and his second dosage was successfully delivered twelve days later on January 23.
A breakthrough came at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921, when Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin from canine test subjects, produced diabetic symptoms in the animals, and then began a program of insulin injections that returned the dogs to normalcy. Their discovery was announced to the world on November 14, 1921.
Two months later, with the support of J.J.R. MacLeod of the University of Toronto, the two scientists began preparations for the first insulin treatment to be administered to a human. With the help of biochemist J.B. Collip, they extracted a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreas of cattle from slaughterhouses, and used it to treat Leonard Thompson.
I thought I would start a thread to thank these guys and any one else who has been significant in helping me and others in our lives with diabetes.
My personal thanks go to my DSN who has been with me since the start. Her attitude of "diabetes should not stop you doing what you want" has continued to drive me.
Thompson's first dose had an apparent impurity which caused an allergic reaction. A refined process was quickly developed to improve the canine pancreas from which the insulin was derived, and his second dosage was successfully delivered twelve days later on January 23.
A breakthrough came at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921, when Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully isolated insulin from canine test subjects, produced diabetic symptoms in the animals, and then began a program of insulin injections that returned the dogs to normalcy. Their discovery was announced to the world on November 14, 1921.
Two months later, with the support of J.J.R. MacLeod of the University of Toronto, the two scientists began preparations for the first insulin treatment to be administered to a human. With the help of biochemist J.B. Collip, they extracted a reasonably pure formula of insulin from the pancreas of cattle from slaughterhouses, and used it to treat Leonard Thompson.
I thought I would start a thread to thank these guys and any one else who has been significant in helping me and others in our lives with diabetes.
My personal thanks go to my DSN who has been with me since the start. Her attitude of "diabetes should not stop you doing what you want" has continued to drive me.
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