On 14^th November 1891 a son was born at one of the farms close to Allistone in the province of Ontario. The farm belonged to the Banting family and the son got the name Frederic Grant. The parents wished, the boy to study theology, but Frederic together with his nephew took the way of medicine. After finishing the university in Toronto, he served in the army and after the end of the World War I. he came back decorated with a war cross. In the year 1920 he had moved to London in the province of Ontario, where he opened his medical practice. However this didn’t satisfy him and so he accepted the position of an assistant of physiology at the University of Western Ontario.

Frederik Grant Banting

Here he started to deal with the idea, how to isolate the component of pancreas, that acts against diabetes. As it is known, the whatness of diabetes consist in the fact, that for the lack of that component ( nowadays we known, that it is the insulin hormone) in our body, the glucose (elementary sugar) can’t be utilized in the cells. And so the glucose is accumulated in the body and when its amount reaches certain level, it verges into urine. If a correction is not made, then the transformation of albumens and fats suffers and finally the whole metabolism is disrupted. If the diabetes is not healed, it can lead to a rise of some diseases and even to coma.

Banting continued in his search for an “ antidiabetical component” at the university in Toronto, with permission and contribution of John James Ricket MacLeode, who worked there as a professor in the department of physiology. Banting didn’t have the necessary experience on the field of research, therefore MacLeod assigned him an assistant, young Charles Herbert Best, who became bachelor in physiology and chemistry only several weeks before being assigned for this position. Best became classical example of a man, who had been “ on the right place in the right time ”: in 3 months his name was known in the whole medical world, although he hadn’t started his medical study yet.

They started their work (May 1921) with studying literature concerning pancreas. They found out, that the diabetes had already been known to the ancient Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks. They also learnt, that two Austrians Minkowski and Von Mering invoked diabetes by dogs by withdrawing their pancreas, this happened in 1899. Furthermore they found out, that already 10 years before this in 1899, German Paul Langerhans discovered, that even the absence of only some of the pancreas cells (so called Langerhans´s isles) causes this disease. Not even this literary “excursion” into the preceding 50 years of fruitless searching drew them back.

Their laboratory was in a small room on the first floor in an old building in Toronto, that hadn’t been used for certain time. The room was equipped with only elementary apparatuses and equipment. The basic idea of their work was to withdraw the extract obtained with the help of a unique method from pancreas and to inject this extract to dogs, by which diabetes was invoked before. Both the men agreed, that Banting would do the surgery and Best would do the biochemical tests on sugar in blood and urine (with mutual assistance). Still after 7 weeks they didn’t come to satisfactory results. Moreover MacLeod was in Europe that time, and so Banting and Best didn’t become their wages. Banting was therefore forced to sell his Ford, to cover their expenses. First at the end of July

reduced level of sugar in blood was detected by the experimental dog. That confirmed Banting´s theory, but there was still no reason for jubilation. It was necessary to confirm the theory with further experiments and also MacLeod, who came back from Europe insisted on repeating the whole procedure again. The results of experiments convinced MacLeod, and so the discovery was published on 14^th November 1921 in Toronto’s Physichological Journal Club and before the end of that year in American Physiological Society.

Despite of the reached success, several problems still remained and it was necessary to solve them. Especially the purification of the extract and its application to human patients suffering from diabetes. And so in December 1921 MacLeod asked biochemist James Bertram Collip to solve these problems. Collip accepted his proposal gratefully and in 1922 prepared an extract (from bovine pancreas), that was already useable for human patients. The first patient, who was successfully healed, was a 14-year-old boy - Leonard Thompson. In the same year Eli Lilly Company in Indiana proposed to continue in the increasing of the extract’s purity. The results had already appeared in the half of November and in January 1923 relatively sufficient amount for clinical purposes was produced in cooperation with Connaught Laboratories. Banting together with Best named this “miraculous” hormone Isletin (apparently in connection with Langerhans´s isles), later it was renamed (supposedly by MacLeod) to Insulin (apparently from Latin word “insulae” - “islands”).

(picture taken from http://www.krider.com/prod03.htm)

Although the production of insulin was Banting´s idea and although the main credit of its discovering belongs above all to Best together with Banting, the Nobel price for its discovering in 1923 was awarded to MacLeod and Banting. Banting was so displeased, that he shared the price with Best.

For all that, what Banting did for the mankind, the destiny wasn’t favourable to him. In February 1941, during the World War II., when he was flying in a bomber to Ireland to help the RAF, the airplane started to have problems with the engine after 25 minutes of flight over Atlantic. The pilot had turned the plane to the mainland, however he couldn’t have avoid the tragedy.