Plenary Conference: Technology applied to insulin therapy: 100 years after

Abstract

The year 1921 marked a milestone for diabetes. Although several attempts had already been made, orthopedic surgeon Frederick Banting and student Charles Best, with tenacity and wit, in the area of Physiology at the University of Toronto and under the direction of John James Rickard MacLeod (who apparently did not have much faith in the project), were able to extract a substance from the ligation of the pancreatic ducts of a number of dogs. They reduced the pancreas to a third of its size and it was left fibrotic, then sliced and crushed with sand. They added toluene to it and then it was extracted with a cold Ringer, resulting in the obtaining of a solution.

Doctor Joseph Gilchrist (who had diabetes since 1917), a friend of Banting, drank the preparation, with no results. However, when dog Marjory, who had diabetes caused by a pancreatectomy, was injected, her glucose first increased, but then started descending. She stayed alive and lively until she was put down in order to study the effects of the preparation, which was called Isletin.