The Discovery of Insulin by Michael Bliss

They, with some degree of rancour, announce that they will each share their portion of the prize with someone else. When the Nobel Prize is handed out in 1923, it is only the absent professor (Macleod) and the surgeon (Frederick Banting) who are honoured. In the course of that summer this unlikely team achieve the impossible: they isolate the active secretion of the pancreas, and the rest, as they say, is history. A late addition to the “team” is a biochemist to help purify “the stuff.” The professor, leaving for his summer holiday, reluctantly gives his permission plus the assistance of an untried medical student. He goes to his former professor of physiology at an obscure medical school and asks for some space and supplies to attempt to isolate the internal secretion of the pancreas-a task which researchers over the world (with one exception) had failed to achieve for half a century. A young surgeon with no bench research experience has his curiosity piqued by a casual journal article. Imagine the following absurd scenario for a research proposal.

The story reads like one of Berton Rouche's medical detective tales or a Michael Crichton science fiction novel. When I first read the book in the 1980s I couldn't put it down, and the hair on my neck still rises when I look at those handwritten notes penned during that hot Toronto summer of 1921. But because it was not a cure, it was also one of the century's premier disappointments. For a diabetes physician, Bliss's classic book is like “The Creation.” The Discovery of Insulin is the true tale of the medical and scientific detective work and intrigue that led to what is arguably one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.

The Discovery of Insulin by Michael Bliss