jul 27, 1921 - Banting and Best Isolate Insulin

Description:

At the turn of the 20th century a strict low-calorie, no-carbohydrate diet was the only effective treatment for diabetes. But this method, with food intake sometimes as low as 500 calories per day, had its consequences, as slow starvation, like diabetes, drained patients of their strength and energy, leaving them semi-invalids. Something had to be done to help patients with diabetes who were weak and needed extra help. 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. Banting and Macleod earned a Nobel Prize for their work in 1923.

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