This blog post is part of a series celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. You can also read our previous blogs on the people who discovered insulin; Eva Saxl & her homemade insulin; and the first recipients of insulin! All blogs were written by CIM Intern, Eleanor Medley.
Many letters, medical records, and news articles chronicling the stories of the first people to receive insulin therapy have been preserved.[1] Another blog in this series describes who some of the first recipients of insulin were. The following is a compilation of first-hand accounts from some of these people regarding what it was like to receive early preparations of insulin.
“Dearest, dearest Mumsey,
I hope to goodness this does reach you safely for it carries some very interesting news I think. Dr. Banting came in as usual last night about 5:30 pm and said he had a good report to make. The insulin which they have been working on for so long will now be ready for use in a couple of days at the most, and it is the most powerful that has yet been made. So much so, in fact, that I will only have to take 1 cc at a time when I begin on my two doses, which will be very soon, I think.
He is getting enough of it so that his three outside patients, Ruth Whitehill, Teddy Rider, and myself will not have to change out insulin for a month or so, which is a very good thing as you know. He was so happy over that part of it, and he really feels that it is becoming more stabilized all the time. He said, you can tell your Mother that I can promise her that with this new extract, the next time you see me I will be on 2240 calories the full amount that a girl of my age should be having. It will be divided like this—60 of protein, 50 of carbohydrate, and 200 of fat. Now if I don’t begin to gain weight on that I will be crazy.”
-Letter Elizabeth Hughes wrote to her mother on August 22, 1922 about preparing to be treated with a new insulin extract by Banting. Available at the University of Toronto Libraries (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) Insulin Collections, The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin, Hughes (Elizabeth) Papers, “Letter to mother 22/08/1922” https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AL10006
“I am simply bursting to see you and can hardly wait for you to actually see with your own eyes what I’m eating nowadays, for if you didn’t I declare you’d think it was a fairy tale. I know you will hardly know me as your weak, thin daughter, for I look entirely different everybody says, and I can even see it myself.
By now I have gained a little over ten pounds weighing 60 ½ in my skin, and when I arrived I weighed just 49 lbs. I feel I look the way I did up in Glen Falls when I had that good picture taken. I am just beginning on new extract now, and am trying to get adjusted to it. It is just about half as powerful as the last I’ve been having so of course I am taking much more of it.”
-Letter Elizabeth Hughes wrote to her mother and father on September 24, 1922 after she had been treated with insulin by Banting in Toronto. Available at the University of Toronto Libraries (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) Insulin Collections, The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin, Hughes (Elizabeth) Papers, “Letter to Mother and Father 24/09/1922” https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AL10007
“Dear Dr. Banting,
I wish you could come to see me. I am a fat boy now and I feel fine. I can climb a tree. Margaret would like to see you.
Lots of love from Teddy Ryder”
-Letter Teddy Ryder wrote to Banting in 1923 after he had been treated in Toronto and returned back home. In 1923, he was around 7 years old. Margaret is his sister. Available at the University of Toronto Libraries (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) Insulin Collections, The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin, F.G. Banting (Frederick Grant, Sir) Papers, “Letter to Banting ca.1923”
https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AL10021#page/1/mode/1up/search/teddy%20ryder
“The estimation of blood sugar, is really a specialist’s work, and constant analyses are needed for the exact adjustment of diet to the units injected, and for the maintenance of the blood sugar in the patient at or just above the normal level. Thus one patient under the insulin treatment, in the initial stage at least, takes up a large part of his doctor’s day. That is why one hears so little of the treatment outside specialized institutions
Faith certainly played no part in my recovery. I was so skeptical after my first injection—they jam in a sharp tube an inch or two under the skin—that I even felt a little virtuous. My reward was a slice of good honest bread at luncheon instead of those abominable biscuits of the taste and consistency of sawdust…It gave one a homely feeling to get back to the amenities of life. So far so good. Another injection before dinner. But was it worth it?
…Very few people one meets knows much about diabetes. I should explain that the disease doesn’t hurt; its general effect is a series of privations. One has to give up eating most of the things one likes; then games have to be abandoned, progressively, first tennis, then golf; one’s walks are curtailed; one doesn’t feel in the least sociable. Stairs become a serious proposition. At the end of the day one wishes that one went downstairs instead of upstairs to bed. The disease amounts of a panless wilting of the body and mind; a premature old age.
On the second day the miracle was accomplished. The tests declared that the poison was out of my system. For weeks and months the most rigorous diet and avoidance of fatigue had failed to evict it. I forgot my thirst. The drowsiness left me…
Insulin is a force of magical activity, but its effects are not permanent. One must go on pumping it in, not continuously, but intermittently. My experience is that a month without it means a considerable loss of vitality…
At present the cost is prohibitive for the poor man who is not in a hospital, and the man of moderate means finds it difficult to obtain treatment outside of an institution. When one hears of a case in private practice one may infer either a rich patient or a charitable doctor. But this cannot go on indefinitely; too many thousand lives are at stake.”
-From “Insulin: a patient’s point of view” published in the London Times in 1923, available at the University of Toronto Libraries (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library) Insulin Collections, The Discovery and Early Development of Insulin. Office of the President.
https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AC10172#page/1/mode/1up/search/from%20a%20patient%27s%20point%20of%20view
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