In 1922, a group of scientists went to the Toronto General Hospital where diabetic children were kept in wards, often 50 or more at a time. Most of them were comatose and dying from diabetic ketoacidosis. Others were being treated by being placed on an extremely strict diet, which inevitably led to starvation.
This is known as one of medicine's most incredible moments. Imagine a room full of parents sitting at the bedside waiting for the inevitable death of their child.
The scientists went from bed to bed and injected the children with a new purified extract: it was called insulin.
As they began to inject the last comatose child, the first child injected began to awaken. Then one by one, all the children awoke from their diabetic comas. A room of death and gloom became a place of joy and hope.
In the early 1920s Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin under the directorship of John Macleod at the University of Toronto. With the help of James Collip insulin was purified, making it available for the successful treatment of diabetes.
In the same year, Banting, Collip, and Best decided to sell the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for $1.
Banting and Macleod earned a Nobel Prize for their work in 1923.
