July 11, 2014

Banting | Best & Insulin #1 About

On January 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old diabetic who lay dying at the Toronto General Hospital, was given the first injection of insulin. However, the extract was so impure, Thompson suffered a severe allergic reaction, and further injections were canceled. Over the next 12 days, Collip worked day and night like hell to improve the ox-pancreas extract, and a second dose was injected around January 23. This was completely successful, not only in having no obvious side-effects but also in completely eliminating the glycosuria sign of diabetes, What gracious miracle. The first American patient was Elizabeth Hughes Gossett, the daughter of the governor of New York. The first patient treated in the U.S. was future woodcut artist James D. Havens; Dr. John Ralston Williams imported insulin from Toronto to Rochester, New York, to treat Havens. Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.  In one of medicine's more dramatic moments, Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families. Banting and Best never worked well with Collip, regarding him as something of an interloper, and Collip left the project soon after. Over the spring of 1922, Best managed to improve his techniques to the point where large quantities of insulin could be extracted on demand, but the preparation remained impure. The drug firm Eli Lilly and Company had offered assistance not long after the first publications in 1921, and they took Lilly up on the offer in April. In November, Lilly made a major breakthrough and was able to produce large quantities of highly refined insulin wow! Real crazy company you know. Insulin was offered for sale shortly thereafter on business scale as it spread through the whole country.  Banting was appointed Senior Demonstrator in Medicine at the University of Toronto in 1922. The following year he was elected to the new Banting and Best Chair of Medical Research, endowed by the Legislature of the Province of Ontario. He also served as Honorary Consulting Physician to the Toronto General, the Hospital for Sick Children, and the Toronto Western Hospital. At the Banting and Best Institute, he researched silicosis, cancer, and the mechanisms of drowning. During the Second World War he investigated the problems of aviators, such as "blackout" ( syncope)...

Banting developed an interest in painting beginning around 1921 while he was in London, Ontario. He became friends with Group of Sevenartists A. Y. Jacksonand Lawren Harris, sharing their love of the rugged Canadian landscape.
 In 1927 he made a sketching trip with Jackson to the St. Lawrencein Quebec. Later that year they traveled to RCMP outposts in the Arctic on the Canadian Government supply ship Beothic. The sketches, done both in oils on birch panels and in pen and ink, were named after the places he visited: Craig Harbour, Ellesmere Island; Pond Inlet, Baylot Island; Eskimo tents at Etach; others were untitled.
Jackson and Banting also made painting expeditions to Great Slave Lake, Walsh Lake ( Northwest Territories), Georgian Bay, French Riverand the Sudbury District.  Banting married twice. His first marriage was to Marion Robertson in 1924; they had one child, William (b. 1928). They divorced in 1932 and Banting married Henrietta Ball in 1937. In 1938, Banting's interest in aviation medicine resulted in his participation with the Royal Canadian Air Force(RCAF) in research concerning the physiological problems encountered by pilots operating high-altitude combat aircraft. Banting headed the RCAF's Number 1 Clinical Investigation Unit (CIU), which was housed in a secret facility on the grounds of the former Eglinton Hunt Clubin Toronto. In February 1941, Banting died of wounds and exposure following a Lockheed L-14 Super Electra/ Hudsoncrash in Musgrave Harbour New found land. He was en route to England to conduct operational tests on the Franks flying suit developed by his colleague Wilbur Franks. Banting and his wife are buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto Best on the other hand, born in West Pembroke, Washington County, Maine, the son of Luella Fisher and Herbert Huestis Best, Canadians from Nova Scotia, got married to Margaret Hooper Mahon in Toronto in 1924 and they had two sons. One son, Dr. Henry Bestwas a well-regarded historian who later became president of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. Best's other son was Charles Alexander Best, a Canadian politician and geneticist.  Best was interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto (section 29) not far from Sir Frederick Banting.

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