Guest guest Posted January 9, 2012 Report Share Posted January 9, 2012 Miracle On Bloor Street: January 8th, Toronto Star The Toronto Star (2012-01-08) Opinion Miracle on Bloor Street; Ninety years ago, Toronto doctors gave the first insulin injection to an emaciated 14-year-old boy and delivered millions from the death sentence of diabetes Graphic: An insulin kit from the 1920s. The family in 1916, with on her father's knee. served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ninety years ago this week, one of the greatest miracles in medical history took place. Leonard , a 14-year-old boy lying on his deathbed at Toronto General Hospital, was snatched from the jaws of death with the injection of a brand new experimental drug. For three years, young Leonard had starved his body in order to prolong his life. He was following one of the prescribed regimens for the incurable disease that had, throughout history, stolen from children the opportunity to reach adulthood. Leonard's disease was juvenile diabetes, now commonly known as type 1 diabetes. On Jan. 11, 1922, Leonard became the first human being to receive an experimental extract called insulin. The first injection was unsuccessful; an abscess developed and additional treatment was withheld for several weeks while doctors struggled to refine the extract. The revised formula worked. In those early months of 1922, only a small group of children received the new drug. Production issues meant the insulin was still extremely scarce. News articles discussing the discovery received some attention over the next seven months, but it took the headline-grabbing story of a 15-year-old girl to awaken the world to the miracle of insulin. On Aug. 15, 1922, a train pulled into Union Station in Toronto, carrying an emaciated girl - she was five feet tall and weighed 45 pounds. Over the next 48 hours, the entire world would learn that , the youngest daughter of America's most famous politician, , was being treated with a miraculous new drug that had the potential to end her heroic struggle with juvenile diabetes. Like Leonard, had been diagnosed in 1919 with what was then a death sentence: juvenile diabetes mellitus. At the time, the average life span for people with type 1 diabetes was 11 months. Defined as the body's inability to metabolize food, researchers speculated that a pancreatic secretion was key to treating the disease, but until a group of University of Toronto Medical School researchers isolated that secretion, no one had been able to translate theory into practice. met with Dr. Frederick Banting, one of the four discoverers of insulin, at his Bloor Street office in downtown Toronto, a neighbourhood on the edge of respectable, buzzing with the new sounds of privately owned automobiles, and surrounded by slums. Banting fit right in: he wore a wrinkled suit - the only one he owned - and needed a haircut. " No one ever had an idea in a dress suit, " Banting used to say. was a child of privilege, born in the New York governor's mansion. She had lost the opportunity to live in the White House when declined to run for president on the 1920 Republican ticket. His eldest daughter, Helen, had just died of pneumonia, and he believed he needed to prepare for 's imminent death. To this day her father remains the only man in American history to have served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Banting noted in 's chart: " Extremely emaciated, slight edema of ankles, skin dry and scaly, hair brittle and thin, abdomen prominent, shoulders drooped, muscles extremely wasted . . . She was scarcely able to walk on account of weakness. " In the years prior, 's parents had chosen the most radical of treatments to prolong her survival - the Starvation Diet. It called for a drastic reduction in caloric intake, particularly from carbohydrates. This restriction allowed patients to manage their blood glucose levels, but they also risked starving themselves to death. For , the Diet became her religion: she counted calories, weighed food, and kept meticulous records of her dietary intake. While most girls her age averaged 2,200-2,400 calories daily, sometimes consumed as little as 400. Despite her condition, 's formidable spirit remained intact. " I spend most of my time lately from 11:00 to 6:30 out in my hammock, knitting, writing and reading, " she wrote her mother on May 16, 1922. " In that lazy way the days seem to literally fly by though and I certainly am getting stronger daily, I feel it, so cheer up!! " She wasn't getting stronger. Sitting in Banting's office, was putting her faith in another radical treatment. Banting understood the enormity of her risk. He had abandoned his own newly established medical practice and fiancée three years earlier to research the drug. He filled a 3/8-inch, 25-gauge hypodermic needle and plunged it into 's hip. Insulin had been the missing link in diabetes treatment. By isolating this pancreatic secretion in healthy animals, Banting and a team of researchers had figured out how to literally bottle the very extract that people with diabetes cannot produce on their own. At the time of 's first injection, insulin supply was low, and any manufactured batches were either unusable or unpredictable. Banting was thrust into the unenviable position of deciding who would receive insulin - and who would not. He wrote of the almost mythical perception of the drug: " Diabetics swarm around from all over and think that we can conjure the extract from the ground. " Consequently, he was forced to turn away hundreds who arrived at his clinic and hundreds more who wrote him. 's position as ' daughter afforded her the luck to be one of the chosen. And her body responded well to her good fortune. Despite its experimental nature, 's reaction to insulin was remarkable. She did not experience any of the severe side effects seen in other early patients, such as hypoglycemic shock. Every day she added foods to her diet that she hadn't tasted in years - white bread, bananas, corn, plums. She grew taller and gained two pounds a week. " I can't express my gratitude for the chance I am having in being up here to take advantage of this wonderful discovery, " wrote in a letter on Sept. 24, 1922. " We have several poor people come here to ask about the treatment and they were eventually all turned away, " she later wrote. " [it] makes you feel so sorry and yet you can't do a thing about it. " was reminded of her privileged position whenever she opened a newspaper. She became, too, the unwilling poster child for insulin, with headlines proclaiming: " New Treatment Aids Miss " ; " Little Daughter of Seemingly Cured of Diabetes " ; " Science's New Cure Leads 's Child to Health. " For Banting, the attention bestowed on was validation that his discovery worked. He was not a distinguished endocrinologist. He was an ex-WWI medic more comfortable amputating limbs on the battlefield than conducting formal research. Yet within a year he had proven his skeptics wrong. Insulin saved lives. But it was not a cure, as many touted. Many who received insulin stopped regulating their diets, and others did not take the drug as scheduled, suffering fatal consequences. had swollen, painful lumps on her hips from repeated injections and she continued to take great care with her diet - facts the public was not privy to. They read only of her miraculous recovery. In December 1922, returned home to Washington D.C. Besides the daily insulin injections that she administered to herself, her life regained a sense of normalcy. She attended school, played sports, and summered in Europe. And as the press coverage faded into distant memory, she hid her condition from anyone outside her close family circle. She destroyed all pictures of herself while in the ravages of the starvation diet. Even her father's biographer wasn't permitted to write of 's condition. After left Toronto, Banting's prominence grew. For his discovery of insulin, he was the co-recipient - with Dr. J.J.R. Macleod - of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine; an award they shared with the two other discoverers, Best and Bertram Collip. Banting was knighted by the King in 1934 and given a lifetime annuity by the Canadian government. In the annals of medical history, his discovery had - according to the New York Times in May 1923 - put the " feather in the cap of science. " chose to follow her moment of fame with a lifetime of silence. She married, had three children, took two insulin injections a day, and successfully hid her disease. When she died in 1981 at the age of 73, no obituaries noted her illness or her being, for a snapshot in time, the most famous girl in America. Insulin cost $1,400 to discover at the University of Toronto Medical School in 1922 and through the extraordinary efforts of the Eli Lilly and Company, became available to people around the world just two years later. Insulin is today the most widely prescribed drug in medical science. The world now has, according to the International Diabetes Federation, 366 million diabetics - and the IDF announced in November that this number will swell to 552 million by 2030. The " Miracle Drug, " once only granted to a select few, will continue to transform millions of lives. Arthur Ainsberg is the co-author, with Thea , of Breakthrough: Banting, Best, and the Race to Save Millions of Diabetics. Arthur Ainsberg - Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 9, 2012 Report Share Posted January 9, 2012 Thanks, . Interesting for those of us who have been diabetic for decades, in that hearing how the initial production and use of insulin was an event not all that far back in history. In many ways, the prescribed method of treatment didn't change much until the late 70s or early 80s with the advent of personal blood glucose testing meters. This significant point in time is proceeded only by the discovery of insulin. Dave ~~Zach Brenner loses his eyesight and struggles to find direction. Jessie Weaver searches for a man responsible for saving her life on 9/11, and meets Zach.~~ Released January 1, 2012, The Attaché is a story of two people searching for one thing, and finding something else. Visit: http://www.authordavidbond.com Published by Desert Breeze Publishing. An EBook available at Amazon and and Noble. Miracle on Boloor Street Miracle On Bloor Street: January 8th, Toronto Star The Toronto Star (2012-01-08) Opinion Miracle on Bloor Street; Ninety years ago, Toronto doctors gave the first insulin injection to an emaciated 14-year-old boy and delivered millions from the death sentence of diabetes Graphic: An insulin kit from the 1920s. The family in 1916, with on her father's knee. served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ninety years ago this week, one of the greatest miracles in medical history took place. Leonard , a 14-year-old boy lying on his deathbed at Toronto General Hospital, was snatched from the jaws of death with the injection of a brand new experimental drug. For three years, young Leonard had starved his body in order to prolong his life. He was following one of the prescribed regimens for the incurable disease that had, throughout history, stolen from children the opportunity to reach adulthood. Leonard's disease was juvenile diabetes, now commonly known as type 1 diabetes. On Jan. 11, 1922, Leonard became the first human being to receive an experimental extract called insulin. The first injection was unsuccessful; an abscess developed and additional treatment was withheld for several weeks while doctors struggled to refine the extract. The revised formula worked. In those early months of 1922, only a small group of children received the new drug. Production issues meant the insulin was still extremely scarce. News articles discussing the discovery received some attention over the next seven months, but it took the headline-grabbing story of a 15-year-old girl to awaken the world to the miracle of insulin. On Aug. 15, 1922, a train pulled into Union Station in Toronto, carrying an emaciated girl - she was five feet tall and weighed 45 pounds. Over the next 48 hours, the entire world would learn that , the youngest daughter of America's most famous politician, , was being treated with a miraculous new drug that had the potential to end her heroic struggle with juvenile diabetes. Like Leonard, had been diagnosed in 1919 with what was then a death sentence: juvenile diabetes mellitus. At the time, the average life span for people with type 1 diabetes was 11 months. Defined as the body's inability to metabolize food, researchers speculated that a pancreatic secretion was key to treating the disease, but until a group of University of Toronto Medical School researchers isolated that secretion, no one had been able to translate theory into practice. met with Dr. Frederick Banting, one of the four discoverers of insulin, at his Bloor Street office in downtown Toronto, a neighbourhood on the edge of respectable, buzzing with the new sounds of privately owned automobiles, and surrounded by slums. Banting fit right in: he wore a wrinkled suit - the only one he owned - and needed a haircut. " No one ever had an idea in a dress suit, " Banting used to say. was a child of privilege, born in the New York governor's mansion. She had lost the opportunity to live in the White House when declined to run for president on the 1920 Republican ticket. His eldest daughter, Helen, had just died of pneumonia, and he believed he needed to prepare for 's imminent death. To this day her father remains the only man in American history to have served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Banting noted in 's chart: " Extremely emaciated, slight edema of ankles, skin dry and scaly, hair brittle and thin, abdomen prominent, shoulders drooped, muscles extremely wasted . . . She was scarcely able to walk on account of weakness. " In the years prior, 's parents had chosen the most radical of treatments to prolong her survival - the Starvation Diet. It called for a drastic reduction in caloric intake, particularly from carbohydrates. This restriction allowed patients to manage their blood glucose levels, but they also risked starving themselves to death. For , the Diet became her religion: she counted calories, weighed food, and kept meticulous records of her dietary intake. While most girls her age averaged 2,200-2,400 calories daily, sometimes consumed as little as 400. Despite her condition, 's formidable spirit remained intact. " I spend most of my time lately from 11:00 to 6:30 out in my hammock, knitting, writing and reading, " she wrote her mother on May 16, 1922. " In that lazy way the days seem to literally fly by though and I certainly am getting stronger daily, I feel it, so cheer up!! " She wasn't getting stronger. Sitting in Banting's office, was putting her faith in another radical treatment. Banting understood the enormity of her risk. He had abandoned his own newly established medical practice and fiancée three years earlier to research the drug. He filled a 3/8-inch, 25-gauge hypodermic needle and plunged it into 's hip. Insulin had been the missing link in diabetes treatment. By isolating this pancreatic secretion in healthy animals, Banting and a team of researchers had figured out how to literally bottle the very extract that people with diabetes cannot produce on their own. At the time of 's first injection, insulin supply was low, and any manufactured batches were either unusable or unpredictable. Banting was thrust into the unenviable position of deciding who would receive insulin - and who would not. He wrote of the almost mythical perception of the drug: " Diabetics swarm around from all over and think that we can conjure the extract from the ground. " Consequently, he was forced to turn away hundreds who arrived at his clinic and hundreds more who wrote him. 's position as ' daughter afforded her the luck to be one of the chosen. And her body responded well to her good fortune. Despite its experimental nature, 's reaction to insulin was remarkable. She did not experience any of the severe side effects seen in other early patients, such as hypoglycemic shock. Every day she added foods to her diet that she hadn't tasted in years - white bread, bananas, corn, plums. She grew taller and gained two pounds a week. " I can't express my gratitude for the chance I am having in being up here to take advantage of this wonderful discovery, " wrote in a letter on Sept. 24, 1922. " We have several poor people come here to ask about the treatment and they were eventually all turned away, " she later wrote. " [it] makes you feel so sorry and yet you can't do a thing about it. " was reminded of her privileged position whenever she opened a newspaper. She became, too, the unwilling poster child for insulin, with headlines proclaiming: " New Treatment Aids Miss " ; " Little Daughter of Seemingly Cured of Diabetes " ; " Science's New Cure Leads 's Child to Health. " For Banting, the attention bestowed on was validation that his discovery worked. He was not a distinguished endocrinologist. He was an ex-WWI medic more comfortable amputating limbs on the battlefield than conducting formal research. Yet within a year he had proven his skeptics wrong. Insulin saved lives. But it was not a cure, as many touted. Many who received insulin stopped regulating their diets, and others did not take the drug as scheduled, suffering fatal consequences. had swollen, painful lumps on her hips from repeated injections and she continued to take great care with her diet - facts the public was not privy to. They read only of her miraculous recovery. In December 1922, returned home to Washington D.C. Besides the daily insulin injections that she administered to herself, her life regained a sense of normalcy. She attended school, played sports, and summered in Europe. And as the press coverage faded into distant memory, she hid her condition from anyone outside her close family circle. She destroyed all pictures of herself while in the ravages of the starvation diet. Even her father's biographer wasn't permitted to write of 's condition. After left Toronto, Banting's prominence grew. For his discovery of insulin, he was the co-recipient - with Dr. J.J.R. Macleod - of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine; an award they shared with the two other discoverers, Best and Bertram Collip. Banting was knighted by the King in 1934 and given a lifetime annuity by the Canadian government. In the annals of medical history, his discovery had - according to the New York Times in May 1923 - put the " feather in the cap of science. " chose to follow her moment of fame with a lifetime of silence. She married, had three children, took two insulin injections a day, and successfully hid her disease. When she died in 1981 at the age of 73, no obituaries noted her illness or her being, for a snapshot in time, the most famous girl in America. Insulin cost $1,400 to discover at the University of Toronto Medical School in 1922 and through the extraordinary efforts of the Eli Lilly and Company, became available to people around the world just two years later. Insulin is today the most widely prescribed drug in medical science. The world now has, according to the International Diabetes Federation, 366 million diabetics - and the IDF announced in November that this number will swell to 552 million by 2030. The " Miracle Drug, " once only granted to a select few, will continue to transform millions of lives. Arthur Ainsberg is the co-author, with Thea , of Breakthrough: Banting, Best, and the Race to Save Millions of Diabetics. Arthur Ainsberg - Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 10, 2012 Report Share Posted January 10, 2012 Every time I read this story, I am so thankful and amazed about the miracle. _____ From: blind-diabetics [mailto:blind-diabetics ] On Behalf Of armando del gobbo Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2012 5:04 PM To: blind-diabetics ; acb-diabetics@... Subject: Miracle on Boloor Street Miracle On Bloor Street: January 8th, Toronto Star The Toronto Star (2012-01-08) Opinion Miracle on Bloor Street; Ninety years ago, Toronto doctors gave the first insulin injection to an emaciated 14-year-old boy and delivered millions from the death sentence of diabetes Graphic: An insulin kit from the 1920s. The family in 1916, with on her father's knee. served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ninety years ago this week, one of the greatest miracles in medical history took place. Leonard , a 14-year-old boy lying on his deathbed at Toronto General Hospital, was snatched from the jaws of death with the injection of a brand new experimental drug. For three years, young Leonard had starved his body in order to prolong his life. He was following one of the prescribed regimens for the incurable disease that had, throughout history, stolen from children the opportunity to reach adulthood. Leonard's disease was juvenile diabetes, now commonly known as type 1 diabetes. On Jan. 11, 1922, Leonard became the first human being to receive an experimental extract called insulin. The first injection was unsuccessful; an abscess developed and additional treatment was withheld for several weeks while doctors struggled to refine the extract. The revised formula worked. In those early months of 1922, only a small group of children received the new drug. Production issues meant the insulin was still extremely scarce. News articles discussing the discovery received some attention over the next seven months, but it took the headline-grabbing story of a 15-year-old girl to awaken the world to the miracle of insulin. On Aug. 15, 1922, a train pulled into Union Station in Toronto, carrying an emaciated girl - she was five feet tall and weighed 45 pounds. Over the next 48 hours, the entire world would learn that , the youngest daughter of America's most famous politician, , was being treated with a miraculous new drug that had the potential to end her heroic struggle with juvenile diabetes. Like Leonard, had been diagnosed in 1919 with what was then a death sentence: juvenile diabetes mellitus. At the time, the average life span for people with type 1 diabetes was 11 months. Defined as the body's inability to metabolize food, researchers speculated that a pancreatic secretion was key to treating the disease, but until a group of University of Toronto Medical School researchers isolated that secretion, no one had been able to translate theory into practice. met with Dr. Frederick Banting, one of the four discoverers of insulin, at his Bloor Street office in downtown Toronto, a neighbourhood on the edge of respectable, buzzing with the new sounds of privately owned automobiles, and surrounded by slums. Banting fit right in: he wore a wrinkled suit - the only one he owned - and needed a haircut. " No one ever had an idea in a dress suit, " Banting used to say. was a child of privilege, born in the New York governor's mansion. She had lost the opportunity to live in the White House when declined to run for president on the 1920 Republican ticket. His eldest daughter, Helen, had just died of pneumonia, and he believed he needed to prepare for 's imminent death. To this day her father remains the only man in American history to have served as a governor, secretary of state, associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Banting noted in 's chart: " Extremely emaciated, slight edema of ankles, skin dry and scaly, hair brittle and thin, abdomen prominent, shoulders drooped, muscles extremely wasted . . . She was scarcely able to walk on account of weakness. " In the years prior, 's parents had chosen the most radical of treatments to prolong her survival - the Starvation Diet. It called for a drastic reduction in caloric intake, particularly from carbohydrates. This restriction allowed patients to manage their blood glucose levels, but they also risked starving themselves to death. For , the Diet became her religion: she counted calories, weighed food, and kept meticulous records of her dietary intake. While most girls her age averaged 2,200-2,400 calories daily, sometimes consumed as little as 400. Despite her condition, 's formidable spirit remained intact. " I spend most of my time lately from 11:00 to 6:30 out in my hammock, knitting, writing and reading, " she wrote her mother on May 16, 1922. " In that lazy way the days seem to literally fly by though and I certainly am getting stronger daily, I feel it, so cheer up!! " She wasn't getting stronger. Sitting in Banting's office, was putting her faith in another radical treatment. Banting understood the enormity of her risk. He had abandoned his own newly established medical practice and fiancée three years earlier to research the drug. He filled a 3/8-inch, 25-gauge hypodermic needle and plunged it into 's hip. Insulin had been the missing link in diabetes treatment. By isolating this pancreatic secretion in healthy animals, Banting and a team of researchers had figured out how to literally bottle the very extract that people with diabetes cannot produce on their own. At the time of 's first injection, insulin supply was low, and any manufactured batches were either unusable or unpredictable. Banting was thrust into the unenviable position of deciding who would receive insulin - and who would not. He wrote of the almost mythical perception of the drug: " Diabetics swarm around from all over and think that we can conjure the extract from the ground. " Consequently, he was forced to turn away hundreds who arrived at his clinic and hundreds more who wrote him. 's position as ' daughter afforded her the luck to be one of the chosen. And her body responded well to her good fortune. Despite its experimental nature, 's reaction to insulin was remarkable. She did not experience any of the severe side effects seen in other early patients, such as hypoglycemic shock. Every day she added foods to her diet that she hadn't tasted in years - white bread, bananas, corn, plums. She grew taller and gained two pounds a week. " I can't express my gratitude for the chance I am having in being up here to take advantage of this wonderful discovery, " wrote in a letter on Sept. 24, 1922. " We have several poor people come here to ask about the treatment and they were eventually all turned away, " she later wrote. " [it] makes you feel so sorry and yet you can't do a thing about it. " was reminded of her privileged position whenever she opened a newspaper. She became, too, the unwilling poster child for insulin, with headlines proclaiming: " New Treatment Aids Miss " ; " Little Daughter of Seemingly Cured of Diabetes " ; " Science's New Cure Leads 's Child to Health. " For Banting, the attention bestowed on was validation that his discovery worked. He was not a distinguished endocrinologist. He was an ex-WWI medic more comfortable amputating limbs on the battlefield than conducting formal research. Yet within a year he had proven his skeptics wrong. Insulin saved lives. But it was not a cure, as many touted. Many who received insulin stopped regulating their diets, and others did not take the drug as scheduled, suffering fatal consequences. had swollen, painful lumps on her hips from repeated injections and she continued to take great care with her diet - facts the public was not privy to. They read only of her miraculous recovery. In December 1922, returned home to Washington D.C. Besides the daily insulin injections that she administered to herself, her life regained a sense of normalcy. She attended school, played sports, and summered in Europe. And as the press coverage faded into distant memory, she hid her condition from anyone outside her close family circle. She destroyed all pictures of herself while in the ravages of the starvation diet. Even her father's biographer wasn't permitted to write of 's condition. After left Toronto, Banting's prominence grew. For his discovery of insulin, he was the co-recipient - with Dr. J.J.R. Macleod - of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine; an award they shared with the two other discoverers, Best and Bertram Collip. Banting was knighted by the King in 1934 and given a lifetime annuity by the Canadian government. In the annals of medical history, his discovery had - according to the New York Times in May 1923 - put the " feather in the cap of science. " chose to follow her moment of fame with a lifetime of silence. She married, had three children, took two insulin injections a day, and successfully hid her disease. When she died in 1981 at the age of 73, no obituaries noted her illness or her being, for a snapshot in time, the most famous girl in America. Insulin cost $1,400 to discover at the University of Toronto Medical School in 1922 and through the extraordinary efforts of the Eli Lilly and Company, became available to people around the world just two years later. Insulin is today the most widely prescribed drug in medical science. The world now has, according to the International Diabetes Federation, 366 million diabetics - and the IDF announced in November that this number will swell to 552 million by 2030. The " Miracle Drug, " once only granted to a select few, will continue to transform millions of lives. Arthur Ainsberg is the co-author, with Thea , of Breakthrough: Banting, Best, and the Race to Save Millions of Diabetics. Arthur Ainsberg - Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.