Penicillin And Insulin In The 1920's

The decade between 1920 and 1930 was a milestone for many health breakthroughs. The work that was done in the 1920’s had a major impact in increasing overall life expectancy. Penicillin and insulin are an easy fix for sore throats and diabetes, respectively. Having an ear infection in 2015 is no big deal. You hop in your car and drive to your doctor’s office. Your doctor sees you, diagnoses you with an ear infection and prescribes you, penicillin like they have dozens of times before. Today penicillin and other antibiotics are taken for granted. Before the 1920’s bacterial infections would do a lot more harm than just having an ear ache. If penicillin was not invented who knows how delayed today’s medicine would be.

Antibiotics are a relatively

Best discovered insulin. “Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that allows your body to turn sugar from carbohydrates in food that you eat for energy or to store glucose for future use.” (Hess-Fischl). Before insulin was created, people with diabetes had a little to no chance of a long life.

Banting and Best found the hormone insulin while performing experiments on the pancreases of dogs. The experiments consisted of the dogs having their pancreases removed and then subsequently showed signs of diabetes. Once removed, Best and Banting turned the pancreas into an injectable extract and inserted daily into the dogs. The injections helped the dogs regain their health.

After experimenting on dogs, Professor John Maceod provided the pair with cow pancreases which was when the extract was named insulin. A biochemist named Bertram Collip joined the research group to help find a way to purify insulin so it could be tested on humans. Banting and Best took the experiments to the extreme when they decided to test the insulin by injecting themselves. The injection caused the two to become weak and dizzy –both are signs of hypoglycemia, a condition which occurs when one’s glucose levels fall too low. After the team figured out how to treat hypoglycemia and understood the required doses, they felt confident enough to try insulin on

Before insulin patients with type 1 diabetes were given short life spans (a few months) and were recommended by doctors to be on a “starvation diet”. Patients were undernourished and some even starved to death. The starvation diet weakened immune systems and could even stunt growth for young children. With insulin, the fourteen year old boy was able to live for thirteen more years before dying of pneumonia. Even though the patient died later on in life, the result of the use of insulin added many years to Leonard’s life opposed to just a few