Geoff Corfield
Geoffrey Corfield has been active in Conservative politics in Canada since 1976, both federally and provincially. But he won’t always write about politics because he has more experience with writing history and humour. He lives in London, Ontario, frequents used book shops, swims lengths, drinks beer, plays croquet, has his own town in north-central Queensland and six books published, and would very much like to find a publisher for this New Zealand book and its companion one for Australia.
One of the problems with this “China Virus Pandemonium”, is that every
other medical condition known to mankind has had to take a back seat
so we can concentrate solely on this increasingly paranoid nonsense.
One of these conditions is diabetes, the third most important cause of
death in Canada, and something much more important than this puffed-up
popgun “killer” virus for which we’re wrecking our economies and way
of life. Diabetes happens everywhere, even in Invercargill.
There is no cure for diabetes but there is a treatment. The treatment
is insulin, and the idea for insulin came from a Canadian doctor in
London, Ontario, Canada.
On 31 July 1921 a little dog with a sad-looking face posed for a
photograph with two doctors. She looked a bit like a whippet, but was
more like a mongrel. Anyway the doctors gave her a shot of a new
medicine. The good news was that the medicine controlled her disease.
The bad news was that it was still experimental and unfortunately
poisoned her.
The two doctors were named Banting and Best. The disease was named
diabetes. The medicine was named insulin. And the dog was named 410.
Diabetes is a disease caused when the pituitary gland doesn’t work
properly. The pituitary gland is a little gland only about this big.
It is located in the head just below the brain. About here. Like all
bits of the human body it has a whole section of the medical
profession all about it, and its very own medical journal: “Pituitary
Pictorial Monthly”.
Dr. Frederick Banting didn’t know all that much about the pituitary
gland when he was asked to do a lecture on it at The University Of
Western Ontario in London in 1920. So he read everything he could find
on the pituitary gland all at once. It’s called cramming. Lots of
students cram. The only difference was that while Banting was cramming
he came up with an idea for the treatment of diabetes. He wrote it
down in 25 words. Those 25 words became insulin.
Banting was working at the university because his job as a GP in
London wasn’t going very well. He’d moved to London in July 1920
because he couldn’t get a job as an orthopedic surgeon in Toronto. He
was trained in knees and elbows you see, which is why he didn’t know
all that much about the pituitary gland.
He set up a practice in a house on Adelaide Street in the east end of the city and waited 28 days for his first patient. I don’t know why he had to wait so long. His office was right in the middle of an industrial area. McCormick’s
candies. O-Pee-Chee gum. Somerville cardboard boxes. You would have
thought he would have gotten a patient in with their fingers stuck
together or their feet stapled to a cardboard carton long before 28
days. But no such luck.
No luck later on either. The University of Western Ontario wouldn’t
give him a job working on his 25-word idea for diabetes so he went
back to The University of Toronto from where he’d graduated, and
discovered insulin there. But first came 31 July and 410. It was to be
another six months before insulin first worked in a human (23 January
1923).
Dr. Frederick Banting only lived in London, Ontario for ten months.
But when he became Sir Dr. Frederick Banting and was the first
Canadian to win a Nobel Prize, he credited London for being the place
that pointed him in the direction of the pituitary gland. He would
never have found it otherwise working on knees and elbows in Toronto.
The Banting Museum in London is located in the very house where
Banting waited 28 days for his first patient and wrote 25 words about
diabetes. The Flame of Hope burns 24 hours a day at Banting House and
will do so until a cure for diabetes is found. People from all over
the world make a pilgrimage there. Whippets, on the other hand, can run
really fast and make excellent pets for kids.
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