THE HISTORY OF DIABETES AND INSULIN
Between the spine and the stomach is the pancreas. It is a gland with two jobs: making enzymes that help digest food and making hormones that control how much sugar is in the blood. Insulin is one of those hormones. Most people never have to think about it; their bodies make the right amount, and it works just the way it should.
But over 800 million people have diabetes, so they have to think about insulin every day.
Most of them don’t make enough insulin, or their cells don’t respond to it the right way. This is called type 2 diabetes. But some people have type 1 diabetes. Their bodies destroy the cells that make insulin. No matter which type of diabetes people have, though, it has the same result: the blood gets too much sugar in it.
BECAUSE TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2 DIABETES BOTH CAUSE URINE THAT TASTES SWEET, IT IS ALSO CALLED DIABETES MELLITUS; MELLITUS MEANS "LIKE HONEY" IN LATIN.
Ancient cultures didn’t know what caused diabetes, but they did notice its effects—peeing too much, constant thirst, weight loss, and eventually, death. An Egyptian papyrus from 1500 BCE suggested treatments “to eliminate urine which is too plentiful.” Greeks called diabetes “the thirsty disease.” Indian physicians discovered that the urine of people with diabetes tasted sweet. But none of them could actually help their patients with diabetes.
That didn’t start happening until Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering made an important discovery. In 1889, these German doctors removed the pancreas from dogs.
One by one, the dogs developed symptoms of diabetes, so they hypothesized that the pancreas and the disease must be related.
BUT HOW?
A HORMONE IS LIKE A LITTLE CHEMICAL MESSENGER THAT TELLS OOUR CELLS WHEN TO GO TO WORK!
Eleven years later and an ocean away, Frederick Banting finished giving an injection. The dog whined as it felt the pinch of the shot. Banting’s colleagues said the experimental medicine looked like thick brown muck; Banting just wondered if it would work.
Earlier in 1921, Banting had been given space in Professor John Macleod’s laboratory in Toronto, Canada. He’d also been given an assistant: Charles Best.
They were trying to extract insulin from the pancreases of healthy dogs, then use it to treat diabetic dogs. So when Banting measured the injected dog’s blood sugar level, he was hoping it had gone down.
IT HAD.
Banting and Best’s breakthrough kick-started a race to refine and produce insulin that was safe for humans. The first dose went to a 13-year-old named Leonard Thompson. He had an allergic reaction due to an impurity in the dose. This was quickly fixed, and he got a second dose 12 days later. It only took 24 hours for Leonard’s lethal blood sugar levels to drop back to normal.
ANOTHER LITTLE BOY, SAVED BY THE NEW INSULIN, WROTE A LETTER TO BANTING. "I FEEL FINE," HE SAID, "I CAN CLIMB A TREE."
Banting and Macleod won a Nobel Prize for their development of insulin. Banting made sure to split his winnings with Best too. Thanks to them, diabetes is no longer a death sentence, and modern technology is making insulin treatment easier and more accurate than ever.