Steel Magnolias Sparknotes

Kimberly Mccrimmon
English 1102
18 February 2016
Time Through Diabetes
The play Steel Magnolias premiered in 1987 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. Steel Magnolias was written by Robert Harling and it was based off of his experience with his sister’s death due to diabetes. She was born in 1953 and she died in 1985, when she was just 32. Diabetes was discovered by Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer. He was an English physiologist who studied the pancreas. Robert Harling’s sister, Susan Harling, suffered from type 1 diabetes which is when the pancreas does not make insulin. Which means blood glucose cannot enter the cells to be used for energy.
In 1953, when Susan Harling was born, tablets for testing urine glucose became available, and urine test strips started to be used. Everyone was much happier because these options were much more simpler than the original method. The original method was Benedict’s solution which was a chemical reagent commonly used to detect presence of reducing sugars. You had to mix it with urine and heat over boiling water. This was the mark of how to track diabetes started.

In 1959 the use of RIA (radioimmunoassay), which is used to detect small amounts of substances in the blood, was used to measure insulin in the blood. This method was used by Solomon Berson, MD and Rosalyn Yalow, PhD. This is when they realized that some people with diabetes made their own insulin. They broke them down into two groups, type 1 diabetes (“insulin-dependent”) and type 2 diabetes (“non-insulin-dependent”). In 1961 a hormone produced by the pancreas called Glucagon is introduced by Eli Lilly and Company as a treatment for severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company founded in