The first insulin injection

Описание: On January 11, 1922, a dying 14-year-old in a Toronto hospital became the center of one of medicine’s greatest turning points when Leonard Thompson became the first human ever to receive an insulin injection and survive.

In the early 20th century, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes was essentially a death sentence. Doctors could offer little more than starvation diets that slowed the disease but left patients weak and wasting away. Leonard Thompson had been admitted to Toronto General Hospital in late 1921, weighing barely 65 pounds. His blood sugar was dangerously high, and his body was breaking down fast. His father agreed to let physicians try an experimental treatment that had never before been given to a human.

The treatment came from the work of Frederick Banting and Charles Best, who had been trying to isolate a substance from the pancreas that could control blood sugar. They worked under the supervision of John Macleod at the University of Toronto. Their early extracts were crude and impure but showed promise in laboratory animals. Chemist James Collip later joined the team and began refining the extract into something safer for human use.

On January 11, 1922, Leonard received the first injection. The result was disappointing. His blood sugar dropped only slightly, and he developed an allergic reaction from impurities in the solution. The team knew the idea was sound, but the insulin needed to be cleaner. Over the next twelve days, Collip improved the purification process while Leonard continued to weaken.

On January 23, Leonard received a second injection with the refined insulin. This time, the change was immediate and unmistakable. His blood sugar levels fell to near normal. The sugar in his urine disappeared. His appetite returned. Over the following weeks, he gained weight and strength, something almost unheard of for a child in an advanced diabetic crisis at the time. Word of the success spread quickly through the medical community.

Within a year, insulin production had expanded, and patients across North America and Europe were receiving treatment. What had once been a fatal childhood disease became a manageable condition. Leonard Thompson lived for more than a decade after his injections, long enough to witness the early impact of a discovery that would save millions of lives.

The moment Leonard received insulin proved that scientific persistence, careful collaboration, and ethical risk taking could turn hopeless illness into survivable disease. Nearly every person who depends on insulin today traces their survival back to that hospital room in Toronto in 1922.

Follow the page for more daily history posts!

#MedicalHistory #Insulin #LeonardThompson #Diabetes #HistoryOfMedicine #CharlesBest #FrederickBanting