The Discovery of Insulin

by Michael Bliss

  As well, the cultural predisposition of the ordinary North American was to honour one or two heroic individuals as inventors or discoverers. And to be particularly impressed by discoverers who turned out to be just ordinary men – ploughboy geniuses – winning their success after heroic struggles against adversity. Banting’s story was perfect: the wounded veteran, the failing small-city doctor, the great idea late at night, nothing but discouragement from the establishment, only a young student helper, grinding poverty, imaginative experiments under the worst conditions – perhaps even having to steal dogs to keep going – and then brilliant, spectacular success. As many writers commented, the discovery of insulin had all the ingredients of a fairy tale or a novel: “A story of bitter struggle, discouragement and scientific greatness, the romance far surpassing the most thrilling fiction tale of the day.” Except, they always added, that it was true.1

  In 1923, Canada, the United States, and then Britain discovered the shy young discoverer of insulin, Frederick Banting. The acclaim began with a standing ovation for Banting when the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology met in Toronto at the end of December 1922, carried on through the cheers of six hundred fellow doctors at the New York Academy of Medicine, accolades from Canada’s prime minister and the leader of the opposition at a banquet in Ottawa, a triumphant homecoming in Alliston, Ontario, the first life membership ever given by Toronto’s Canadian Club (before a thousand cheering businessmen), and luncheon upon luncheon, talk after talk, as everyone wanted a chance to pay tribute to the glory of insulin and its discoverer. In the summer of 1923 the young Canadian went back to the Old World to be honoured, speaking to Britain’s and Europe’s most distinguished medical men, being received in a special audience by King George V. He came home to Canada and Toronto to open that year’s Canadian National Exhibition. There was so much publicity and glory that Banting and his advisers had to consider carefully whether he was violating the profession’s rules outlawing self-advertisement.

  Banting was shy, inarticulate, and ordinary. He disliked giving interviews or speeches of any kind, and invariably gave them badly. But admiring writers had no trouble finding the diamond in the rough. Was Dr. Banting quiet and shy? Then he must be wonderfully modest and humble. A doer, not a talker, saving his talents for the lab. Silent, like Calvin Coolidge. Was he physically undistinguished, except for a slight stoop? Yes, but surely it was clear that from behind his glasses “looked forth a pair of eyes which even in their most casual glance gave the impression of penetrating beneath the surface of things and reading secrets not revealed to ordinary eyes.” Did he come from a very ordinary background of Simcoe County farm stock? Just fine, for “on average soil great characters grow,” and wasn’t it wonderful how much he loved his mother? Was his school record mediocre? Fine, for all great discoverers – Darwin, Bacon, Pasteur, Lister, and now Banting – were actually patient, determined plodders, not brilliant dreamers. So Banting hated being interviewed, to the point of insulting reporters: call this “refreshing rudeness,” and write that you can’t help liking him anyway.2

  Suppose that Banting gives a dreadful speech at an international congress of surgeons in London, a virtually inaudible performance by a completely graceless country doctor, one which looked particularly bad when compared with the fluent prose of the suave European surgeon on the same program. Use it as an excuse for a comparison of European and American upbringings:

  Where a continental student makes the art of love his besetting interest from the age of eighteen, his American companion takes just as naturally to sports. But one acquires a facility of bearing in the presence of ladies, an exaggerated superficial courtesy, accompanied often by profound inward contempt. The other acquires a more robust, vigorous demeanor towards men, an esteem for deeds and a scorning of fine phrases. He may also wear an exterior of awkwardness toward the comparatively unknown sex, but he remembers his mother and makes a good husband. It is an infinitely better breed for a new country which has still large open spaces.3

  That session was a nice illustration of the irrelevance of sophistication. Banting had been paired with Dr. Serge Voronoff, who was presenting the latest news on his experiments in transplanting portions of monkey testicles into the scrota of old men to restore their youth and sexual prowess. Voronoff’s “monkey gland” cure for old age was one of the most publicized, and satirized, of all the medical exaggerations and quackeries of the decade. All the green young Canadian had to talk about was insulin. Now how could a person have discovered insulin and not be a genius, even if only of the awkward, mother-loving, North American breed?

  “Banting is greatly in the lime-light here,” Macleod mentioned earlier in a letter to Collip, “and seems to bask in it.”4 Similar observations were made by Roy Greenaway, the Star reporter who saw so much of Banting, and by others who thought he was getting more than his share of the glory for insulin. In fact, Banting’s attitude was not so much a basking in the limelight, but rather the deep ambivalence caused by his believing so completely in his own myth. On the one hand, he was a shy, unsophisticated country boy who hated speeches, banquets, formal dress, and reporters. At times he became thoroughly sick of the attention he was getting. Wanting nothing so much as to be left alone to tinker in a lab somewhere, he would hide from reporters, or just refuse to have anything to do with them. On the other hand, he believed more deeply than even his most ardent admirers in the story of his heroic labour to give birth to insulin. Being as ambitious as any normal person, and more insecure than most, Banting felt he deserved all the recognition he got, especially if it might otherwise go to Macleod. At times Banting’s hatred of Macleod and his paranoia about being deprived of credit – which usually included a belief that Macleod was engineering a conspiracy against him – led Banting into active involvement with the group of friends and wellwishers who were trying to advance his interests.

  Most of the time Banting was able to resolve his conflicts by adopting the sense of a “duty to the public” that many prominent figures come to live by. After a luncheon in May 1923 he noted on his desk calendar, “I sometimes wish most for a luncheon or dinner at which I did not have to speak, a conversation at which diabetes was never mentioned, a postman without letters to answer, a telephone which did not wring, a bedtime with my work all caught up. But one must develop the phylosophy of ‘the greatest good to the greatest number’.”5

  So he went on playing his role as the humble genius. Sometimes he slightly misplayed it. The Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, noted in his diary after the Ottawa dinner for Banting and Best, “They sat on either side of me & we had a good talk together, both modest young men – the modesty perhaps overdone, eg I asked Banting where he lived and he said in an attic & Best was quick to say he could not join the Royal Society not having the money to pay for it – but both are good types.” Had the very observant prime minister looked down, he would have noticed a further example of Banting’s gaucherie in the blue pants he was wearing with his black tuxedo. He had forgotten to bring pants with him to Ottawa and had been unable to rent a pair, finding that they had all been reserved by people coming to the dinner for him.6

  I

  Many of Banting’s friends and many other Canadians thought that a humble genius who had given the world insulin should be recognized by something more tangible than applause or life membership in Canadian Clubs. No Canadian scientist had achieved as much as Banting had; none had even come close. Banting had done it all in Canada, too, turning down all the glittering attractions of fame and fortune in the United States. Thousands of highly educated young Canadians were leaving their native land for the United States in these years. How wonderful that Banting had stayed in Canada to give the world insulin – and was still staying in Canada after becoming so famous. And possibly…just possibly…if we don’t give him the honours he deserves, he’ll take one of those big-paying American jobs we know he’s been offered.

  As early as the autumn of 1922
, some of the Toronto newspapers began to wonder why the University of Toronto was not giving the discoverers of insulin the kind of attention and recognition they were starting to get from the outside world. Later in the year some Toronto doctors began to organize a campaign to obtain the Nobel Prize for Banting; it seems to have fizzled out in the realization that it might be premature, and that attempts to apply pressure to the Nobel trustees could be counter-productive.7

  Early in 1923 a much more general movement began to have Banting, and perhaps Best, honoured. On February 27, in the House of Commons in Ottawa, a Conservative Member of Parliament from Toronto, T. L. Church, injected into a discussion of financial estimates a plea that the government of Canada give substantial financial aid to distinguished Canadian scientists like Banting and Best. “When you think of the numbers of our brightest professional men who are leaving Canada for the United States and England, I think you will agree that it is time the government of Canada did something to encourage scientific discovery and work of this nature, and announce its policy on the subject,” Church said. The minister responsible for the Department of Health avoided the issue by claiming that insulin was still in the experimental stage. While he was willing to look into the subject, he was a little worried that if money were given to Dr. Banting, it would have to be given to many other students and scholars who had achieved valuable scientific results.

  Two days later, in the legislature of the province of Ontario in Toronto, the Conservative leader of the opposition, Howard Ferguson, suggested that the province take up the idea of honouring Banting if the Dominion would not. An annual sum should be set aside to support Banting in his research. The premier of Ontario, E.C. Drury, promised to look into the matter.8

  There was already a movement afoot at the university to provide for Banting’s future (he still had nothing more than a temporary appointment relating to his duties at the diabetes clinic, which would soon close down). On February 26 he noted on his desk calendar that he was considering accepting a full-time research appointment in the institution if it were offered him. “Will not work under or with or have anything to do with Prof. Macleod,” he added. On the day of Ferguson’s question in the Ontario legislature, Banting noted it, and added revealingly in his calendar:

  I would like to propose to the house that they should give the University $10,000 per year for a chair of research & leave out the personal element.

  Macleod is jealous as h____ and raises the objection to DeFries that

  Collip his dear diciple in selfishness will be left out if the government take any step in such a manner as they now propose.

  Prof. Henderson saw the president today and layed before him the plan of a research appointment for me. The President concurred in the usual way of agreeing in full but not acting in full.

  They will likely dilly dally till the opertunity is lost.9

  The prospect of Banting being honoured caused (and had possibly been created by) a flurry of activity by some of his influential friends. Inside the university Velyien Henderson seems to have been the most active. In the wider political world the most energetic of Banting’s friends was Dr. George W. “Billy” Ross, the Toronto physician and former lecturer of Banting’s, who is listed in the 1912 edition of Canadian Men and Women of the Time as “the inventor of a serum for the cure of tuberculosis, 1909.” Ross’s invention having not quite worked out since then, he developed an admiration amounting to hero worship for young Freddie Banting, whose anti-diabetic serum was the real thing. Ross also had good political connections and know-how, his father having been a Liberal premier of Ontario. As the prospect of national honours for Banting developed, Ross determined to do all he could to influence his fellow Liberal in Ottawa, Mackenzie King. On March 13 he told Banting of his “plan for money from Dom’n gov’t.” On March 14, with Banting’s consent, Ross wrote to all of the leading American diabetologists and to Charles Evans Hughes, saying that Canada was considering honouring Banting and, in effect, asking for testimonials on behalf of Banting and insulin. Banting himself wrote to Antoinette Hughes, asking her to give Ross’s letter to her husband for his earliest possible attention.10

  Ross, or one of Banting’s other friends11, also approached the vice-chancellor of the university, Sir William Mulock, an eighty-year-old Liberal statesman of immense influence, particularly with his former protegé, Mackenzie King. Mulock did not know Fred Banting personally, but did know the family, apparently having years earlier lent Banting’s father the money to buy what became the family farm.12 Sir William read Banting’s account of the discovery (Banting had probably given Billy Ross a copy) and passed it along to Mackenzie King. Howard Ferguson, the Ontario politician, also received a copy. No one seems to have circulated Macleod’s, or Best’s accounts. Mulock became another ardent admirer of Banting and his native Canadian genius. Sir William and some others had already been talking about raising a trust fund to provide for Banting, in the same way that rich Canadians often raised trust funds to provide for some of their prominent political friends, such as Mackenzie King himself. But they were now urging King to have the government do some or all of the job:

  The good to the world resulting from Dr. Banting’s discovery is simply incalculable. It is recognized throughout the world as the product of a Canadian Brain, and it seems to me fitting that Canada as a whole should identify with it by making a substantial gift towards one of the greatest benefactors in all ages, to the human race….

  …from your government’s standpoint, it seems to me that Canadian pride, Canadian gratitude and Canadian dignity, would be best satisfied if the whole needs of the situation were met, in the name of the people of Canada, by a grant from the Dominion Government.

  Mulock had been Canada’s postmaster general when Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, had been ready to leave England for the United States because of problems with the British government. Mulock intervened to help Marconi then. Banting’s account of his difficulties reminded Mulock of Marconi and his troubles. Besides, Banting had a great future in store for him. In another letter to King, Mulock urged that

  Banting in the matter of research has the research instinct. In part is I think almost a genius in matters of research work. Those who know him so describe him, a simple, unaffected, shy and thoughtful man, contemplate his solving the cancer problem.

  Is it not worth taking the chance of enabling him to devote himself to the work?13

  II

  Whatever happened to Charley Best? The newspapers sometimes remembered to mention him in the same breath with Banting. Banting often, but not always, remembered to give him a great deal of credit. Many of Banting’s friends, and many others at the university, did not rank him as a partner of or co-discoverer with Banting. To them, Best was a student assistant, doing useful work perhaps, but clearly much junior to the man who had had the idea. The campaign by his friends to have Banting honoured almost completely ignored Best, who did not himself have powerful friends or patrons in Toronto.

  The situation did not go unnoticed. “Got a rotten letter from Charlie’s aunt,” Banting wrote in his desk calendar on March 10. Lillian Hallam, with whom Best had lived in Toronto during the summer of 1921, but who had now moved to Saskatchewan, was tired of hearing accounts of the discovery of insulin which mentioned Banting always, Collip sometimes, and Charles hardly at all. She wanted to know the truth. “So now I ask you,” she wrote Banting,

  are you responsible for the present preparation as it is being administered to patients? What was Charles’ part in the discovery? If he is as responsible as yourself why is your name always put ahead in big letters while his is added “with” instead of “and”? What is at the bottom of this whole thing? Why is just enough credit given to him to keep people from asking Questions? What is it about your part that makes it so much more valuable?

  Banting replied a few days later:

  Mr. Charles Best is not “my associate” in the sense that the other workers
have been, but it is my sincere wish that he be known as a partner in this work. There is no one, including Charles himself, who feels worse than I do when his name is not mentioned with mine in connection with Insulin. He has worked with me from the very first, and because of his honest efforts and enthusiasm, even before there was such a thing as Insulin, he has become part and parcel with me in working out this problem….

  With regard to Dr. Collip, Charles and I both feel that although he did contribute splendidly to the work, the manner in which he made his contribution has lost for him any personal gratitude from us….

  The reason that Charlie’s name has not been mentioned with mine is possibly due to the fact that it is I who has had to lecture and present papers on the Clinical part of the problem and the newspapers have at times used my name separately.14

  Late in March, Premier Drury of Ontario came to Banting’s office to see his research and discuss with him the province’s course of action. Banting told Drury, and repeated in writing a few days later, that his and Best’s names should be coupled together. They had worked together from the very beginning, they were close friends, and they still wanted to work together.15

  Banting’s attitude to Best in the 1921 -23 period is difficult to determine, partly because all of Banting’s later accounts, especially those given verbally to his friends, are coloured by Banting’s later coolness towards Best. At all times Banting credited Best with having stood by him when he most needed help – a reference to the incident in the spring of 1922 when Best persuaded him to come back to the lab (in later life Best claimed there were two of these incidents). During the 1920s Banting also freely admitted that he could not have carried out the experiments without Best’s help. At no time, however, including the letters just cited, did Banting credit Best with specific ideas or proposals that advanced the research. This explains, I think, why Banting often acquiesced in being singled out for special glory. To Banting, Best was the comrade who had been through the wars with him, had seen it all, and endured it all, and had come to the older man’s aid when he was lying wounded. Sometimes, in Banting’s mind, this made Best his equal partner; at other times, it seems to have made him his faithful batman.