In 1922, a team of scientists visited Toronto General Hospital, where wards housed numerous diabetic children. Many of these children were in a comatose state and on the brink of death due to diabetic ketoacidosis. As a result of the amount of deaths, scientists moved swiftly and proceeded to inject the children with a new purified extract of insulin. As they commenced injecting the final comatose child, the first one to receive the injection started to regain consciousness. Subsequently, one by one, all the children emerged from their diabetic comas. During the early 1920s, Frederick Banting, Charles Best and John Macleod discovered insulin. Both Banting and Macleod were awarded Nobel Prizes in 1923. James Collip played a crucial role in refining insulin, which was instrumental in enabling its effective application in diabetes treatment. Banting declined to have his name included on the patent and opted to sell it to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. He believed it unethical to seek profit from a discovery destined to save countless lives. “Insulin belongs to the world, not to me," he said. In 2019, the average cost was $58 per insulin fill, typically for a 30-day supply.
@Morbidful When Fredrick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin, they received a US patent for it. Instead of using it to make millions, they sold it to the University of Toronto for $1. When asked why, Banting said: “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.”
These children were essentially in their death beds, awaiting what was at that time, certain death. The scientists moved swiftly and proceeded to inject the children with a new purified extract of insulin. As they began to inject the last comatose child, the first one to be injected began to wake up. Then one by one, all the children awoke from their diabetic comas. A room that was full of death and gloom suddenly became a place of joy and hope. In the early 1920s, Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin under John Macleod at the University of Toronto. With the help of James Collip, insulin was purified, making it available to successfully treat diabetes. Both Banting and Macleod earned Nobel Prizes for their work in 1923. Banting was 32 when he received the Nobel Prize, and he chose to share half the prize money with Best, who was his assistant and just 24 years old at the time. Banting refused to put his name on the patent and instead sold it to the University of Toronto for $1. He thought it was unethical to profit from a discovery that would save millions of lives. "Insulin belongs to the world, not to me," he said.
The smartest people ever assembled in one photo. Seventeen of them are Nobel Prize winners - Einstein is in the middle and Marie Curie two seats to the left. She won prizes in two separate scientific disciplines - still the only person have done so [5th Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics, 1927]
WILLIAM BEAUMONT was a 19th century American doctor who became famous for discovering how human digestive processes occur. Around June, 1822, BEAUMONT rescued a young gunshot victim named ALEX MARTIN, who had a hole in his stomach. The hole was the size of a fist. Because of BEAUMONT's expertise as a surgeon, ALEXIS managed to survive despite the fact that the gunshots left a big wound in his stomach that failed to heal completely, developing into a fistula (Medical students calls it an ABNORMAL connection between two body parts, like an organ or blood vessel and another structure). Alexis' unique situation made it possible, simply by removing the protective bandages, to investigate digestive processes in detail as never before possible. BEAUMONT then offered the boy to become his laboratory assistant, or let me say his "GUINEA PIG," by subjecting him to a series of sufficiently reproducible experiments. At that time, it was a heavy debate as to whether the stomach digested food mechanically or chemically. BEAUMONT was able to solve that mystery or put an end to that debate by using a spoon to insert food into Saint Martin's stomach only to extract and examine it. BEAUMONT also made observations, such as putting meat tied with ropes into the hole and then pulling it out. BEAUMONT performed more than 200 experiments on ALEXIS body. It was because of these studies we were able to know for sure that food was digested by chemical action. That is why he is known as the "FATHER OF GASTRIC PHYSIOLOGY".
@Morbidful The first ever insulin pump, developed by Dr. Arnold Kadish in 1963 vs a modern insulin pump
This is Charles Best and Frederick Banting. They were Canadian scientists that won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin in 1923. Banting was 32 when he received the Nobel Prize and he chose to share half the prize money with Best who was his assistant and just 24 years old at the time. Banting refused to put his name on the patent and instead sold it to the University of Toronto for $1. He thought it was unethical to profit from a discovery that would save millions of lives. "Insulin belongs to the world, not to me," he said. Unfortunately, the drug today has been subjected to price gouging by pharmaceutical companies with the average price per month rising to $450 in 2016.
In 1922, a team of scientists visited Toronto General Hospital, where they found numerous diabetic children suffering in the wards. Many of these children were in a comatose state and on the brink of death due to diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening complication of diabetes. The high number of deaths among the children prompted the scientists to act quickly. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the team of scientists decided to inject the children with a new purified extract of insulin. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, is essential for regulating blood sugar levels. The discovery of insulin and its potential to treat diabetes was a breakthrough in the medical world.