Neither Banting nor Best gave any thought to Collip, whose annoyance that spring at not receiving credit for his insulin work was being countered only by his excitement over glucokinin. In his academic publications Collip went out of his way to identify himself as a co-discoverer of insulin. In June he read a paper, “The History of the Discovery of Insulin,” to the Pacific Northwest Medical Association which, although scholarly and veiled, was his equivalent of the histories of the discovery that Banting, Best, and Macleod had written for Gooderham in September. Privately, Collip was listing his contributions for the benefit of his friends and posterity, and apparently urging Macleod to speak out on his behalf. Collip never revealed the inner history of the discovery period at Toronto, but summarized his relations with those people this way:
There are some people in Toronto who felt that I had no business to do physiological work. Against this I would say that when I entered the collaborating group early in December 1921 it was with a view of putting my whole effort into the pushing forward of the research irrespective of any water-tight compartments. The result was that when I made a definite discovery my confreres instead of being pleased were quite frankly provoked that I had had the good fortune to conceive the experiment and to carry it out. My own feelings now in the matter are that the whole research with its aftermath has been a disgusting business.16
Collip’s contribution to the insulin work was well known at the University of Alberta, where he was one of the most illustrious members of the faculty. Albertans decided to honour their province’s contribution to the discovery, and in May 1923, held a banquet for Collip in Edmonton and a luncheon in Calgary. At the Calgary affair the president of the city’s Canadian Club complained that Banting and Best had been getting such a large share of the glory because of the attention they had been getting in the press of the Eastern cities.17
III
The testimonials Billy Ross had solicited on Banting’s behalf were given to both Mackenzie King and E.C. Drury. Allen, Joslin, Woodyatt, Williams, and Wilder all enthusiastically supported government recognition of Banting’s achievement. Insulin was magnificent, they wrote. Banting (and his associates) had clear priority in its discovery. Banting had great potential as a researcher. Honouring him would be to honour science, encourage research, and honour Canada itself. The clinicians had been asked about only Banting. None of them chose to raise any other name in his testimonial. No other doctors or scientists were asked their views. Charles Evans Hughes in his letter told Mackenzie King something of Elizabeth’s story, saying “I cannot adequately express my gratitude for Dr. Banting’s work, and I trust that he will receive the recognition which is his due.” This was one of the letters King read to his cabinet when they discussed honouring Banting. Another was from Billy Ross, saying that Banting would likely get the Nobel Prize and it was only fitting that he should be first honoured by his own rather than a foreign country.18
Early in May 1923, the Ontario government announced that the University of Toronto was establishing the Banting and Best Chair of Medical Research, a special non-teaching professorship to be held by Banting. An annual grant of 510,000 was to pay Banting’s salary, support his research costs, and fund Best in his research. A special appropriation of $10,000 was passed to reimburse the discoverers for the discovery period; Banting gave Best $2,500 of the money. The only opposition to Ontario’s honours had come from the anti-vivisectionists.
In Ottawa, the Canadian cabinet had approved in principle the idea of some kind of annuity to honour the discovery. (Until just a few years earlier, honours would have come as a matter of course in the form of titles from the monarch, but as a result of public outrage at some of the titles given during the war the Parliament of Canada had decided in 1919 to ask the king not to grant titles to Canadians.) When Mackenzie King wrote Sir Robert Falconer telling him of the decision, he added, “I doubt if it would be possible to go beyond Dr. Banting in this matter to recognize also the services of Mr. Best. Whilst Dr. Banting has chivalrously identified Mr. Best with the credit which has come to himself, I assume that there is no doubt that what is of greatest significance in the discovery is due primarily to Dr. Banting.” King asked Falconer for his opinion.19
The opinion of Falconer, Sir Edmund Walker, Albert Gooderham, Sir Joseph Flavelle, and the other pillars of the University of Toronto, Mulock excepted, is still unclear. Outsiders to the scientists’ struggles, discreet and businesslike, the university’s governors probably hoped the principals could straighten out awkward affairs like this themselves. Such evidence as there is suggests that Gooderham, who had commissioned the 1922 accounts, decided that Banting, or Banting and Best (Collip called them B2), deserved most of the insulin glory. The one public statement of a governor’s view was given by T.A. Russell, an automobile manufacturer with a long and intimate involvement serving the university. Russell was a member of the Insulin Committee and had taken great interest in the work:
I had always known that Dr. Collip had some part in the discovery, but, of course, Dr. Banting, as I understand it, is the man who, in a sense, was the inventor. It was his idea and we looked upon him as being primary in connection with it….The work was too technical to know anything about the relative parts that each took in it.
I understand that Dr. Banting had the idea and Mr. Best and Dr. Collip contributed materially to the working-out of the idea with the suggestions that they made in regard to it. Of course, Professor Macleod’s connection with it was well known as a man who had complete knowledge of physiology and as to what had been done in this field of research, but in my analysis of the part played by each I might be all wrong.
If somebody came to our plant here with an idea that appealed to us we would give him a chance to work it out. We would place engineers at his disposal and would supply him with necessary tools of steel and aid him with suggestions without which he might fall down, but we would regard him as the inventor. The important thing is that it is a wonderful discovery, bringing hope and life to thousands of people.20
Sir Robert Falconer, who was considerably better equipped to understand the subtleties of the situation, may not have shared this confusion of discovery isolation with invention. But that cannot be known, for he was a master of discretion and fence-sitting. Falconer’s reply to King’s inquiry covered almost all possibilities: “There is of course the case of Mr. Best, and furthermore Dr. Collip of Alberta, who did valuable work on the chemical side in connection with its refinement. Whether you should recognize these gentlemen in addition to some extent is a matter for you to decide.”21
The Banting admiration society was unrelenting. Ross pelted King with letters, arguing that the magnitude of Banting’s discovery warranted more consideration than Ontario’s action, telling the prime minister of Banting’s rejection of the million-dollar American offer for insulin “at a time when he was on the verge of starvation for want of funds.” Ross and his friends arranged to have both the Academy of Medicine, Toronto, and the Canadian Medical Association pass resolutions urging the Dominion government to honour Banting. The Academy of Medicine also declared that Banting and Best had priority in the discovery of insulin.22
On June 27, 1923, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously accepted a resolution moved by the prime minister, seconded by the leader of the opposition, to grant Dr. Banting, in recognition of his discovery of insulin, a lifetime annuity “sufficient to permit Dr. Banting to devote his life to medical research.” The sufficiency was $7,500 a year, a very large sum in 1923. In the brief parliamentary discussion there were references to Banting’s great personal sacrifices, the extent of which would probably always be unknown to the public, and to his selflessness in turning down offers to make large sums of money from his discovery. Members of Parliament believed the Canadian government had a duty to recognize great achievements by distinguished Canadians, but were also pleased that the annuity might make possible more great discoveries by Dr. Banting. None of them knew that of all member
s of the insulin team Banting was the least likely to make further discoveries. Of these others, only Best was mentioned in Parliament, and this only when T. L. Church asked what was going to be done for him and the other Canadian discoverers. No one bothered to answer.23
The reaction to the award was near-unanimous approval from outsiders, such as newspaper editors. Only the anti-vivisectionists had objected. On the inside, Banting’s friends were delighted at a job well done. Sir William Mulock wrote Billy Ross, for example, that “with this endorsement of the Dominion Parliament, Banting is not likely to be robbed of the credit for his great discovery. “24 Other insiders were not so happy. From one quarter a powerful letter was sent to Mackenzie King by C.A. Stuart, chancellor of the University of Alberta:
… there exists in Alberta, among the medical profession and the public generally, as well as among the scientific men in the University of Alberta, a very strong impression, amounting to a firm conviction, that the work of Dr. Collip of the University of Alberta, who assisted in the research which resulted in the discovery of insulin, is being entirely and quite unfairly ignored by the Toronto people.
…The recognition by the Federal Parliament of Banting alone only will, I fear, tend to increase the feeling of injustice and dissatisfaction which I know is abroad among the public of Alberta with respect to the entire absence in the East of any recognition of Dr. Collip’s share in this discovery.25
From Toronto itself a long telegram came to the prime minister from J.G. Fitzgerald, the director of the Connaught Laboratories, to whom a very upset Charles Best had gone on hearing of the news of the annuity. “Banting and Best worked together from the beginning on the research problem which led to the discovery of insulin,” Fitzgerald wired (not completely unambiguously). “Best was not an assistant but a collaborator….The names of Banting and Best are inseparably connected in the original scientific literature…. Banting has energetically supported Best’s share in the discovery.”26
Knowing the telegram was probably too late, Best poured out his disappointment and anger in a letter to Banting, who was en route to England:
…It was rather disconcerting to me, after the way my side of the story has been supported, especially by you, to have the Government acknowledge you as the discoverer, with no reference whatever to my help. However, this is an old story now.
I can see plainly the way it happened. Dr. Ross could just as well of had the thing come through Banting and Best. Obviously he wrote to Allen, Joslin etc asking their opinion of your work. Their replies, which you have probably not seen [actually Banting had seen them], were fine. If he had asked their opinion of our work, they could have spoken equally well of your originality in starting the work and of our progress and the whole thing would have come out o.k. You say that Dr. Ross is a friend of mine. I can not see it. If it had not been for you he would never have connected me up in the academy thing. Perhaps, however, the idea was to keep well outside of the range in which Collip figured. That could have been done all right.27
Banting’s cousin, Fred Hipwell, had taken over most of his private practice. Banting wrote him about receiving Best’s letter and of Best being upset at not being remunerated. “I wish to h they had instead of me,” Banting wrote. “I scarcely know how to answer him. It worries me.” Hipwell had heard from Best, too, but like many of Banting’s friends, had little sympathy for the young man. “I am afraid some one of us is going to have to put him in his place soon,” Hipwell wrote Banting.28
In the meantime the annuitant had written Best saying how sorry he was that it had all worked out this way. It seemed too late to change anything with Ottawa, “only this I can assure you that you will be looked after in some way.” As for himself, Banting concluded, “All I want in the world at present is to get down to work quietly and uninterruptedly in a lab. Any person can have any damned thing they like if I can only be left alone. I have some new remote ideas in a new field and am going to give up practice and everything pertaining to Insulin, and am sick of it all.”29
Mackenzie King responded to the complaints by pointing out that both Collip and Best had been considered, but there was no possibility of Parliament honouring more than one man. “In associating Dr. Banting’s name with the discovery of Insulin,” King wrote, “the Government [was] only following the general consensus of professional and scientific opinion, of which it was necessarily obliged to take account.” Then he concluded, “I am sure Mr. Best and Dr. Collip would be among the first to approve the course which the Government has taken.”30
IV
Word of the annuity had come to Banting in England, where he was not quite the medical idol he had become in North America. He was a fish out of water in British medical and social circles, and the whole visit, he remembered, was one of the most trying ordeals of his life. A young Australian student, Howard Florey, who saw him at a meeting of the Physiological Society at Oxford remarked on him as “a most poisonous looking fellow.”31
J.J.R. Macleod, by contrast, was on his home ground that summer, a well-established member of a scientific community most of whose members tended to believe that the discovery of insulin by Macleod and his young associates was the crowning achievement of the Scotsman’s years of research in the field. Despite the damage Banting was doing to Macleod’s reputation in Toronto, he had won high honours recently, having been elected to the Royal Society that winter and in the spring been awarded the University of Edinburgh’s prestigious Cameron Prize, given for distinction for therapeutics.
(Macleod’s response to news of the Cameron Prize can be read as containing an element of dissembling: “The work on insulin, as you know, has been the outcome of a joint effort by several of us and I feel a little embarrassed at accepting this prize on that account. However, I suppose the award was made after full consideration of these facts and with full knowledge of them and on that account I will feel that I am justified in accepting it.”32 Macleod was ambitious enough and sure enough of his contribution to the discovery, that he was not going to reject a personal honour for it, no matter how often he wrote about team work.)
Macleod was particularly at home at an international meeting of his fellow physiologists, the Eleventh International Physiology Congress, held in Edinburgh in the last week of July. Invited to give the keynote address on insulin at one of the general sessions, Macleod began by thanking the congress on behalf of “my collaborators, as well as myself.” His lecture was an exhaustive account of earlier work on pancreatic extracts, the discovery, insulin’s therapeutic and physiological action, the problem of assay, and the preparation and clinical characteristics of the hormone. It was a major tour de force of this intricate and exciting new development in endocrinology. Banting and Best’s work was given three of Macleod’s fifty-eight paragraphs, and it is difficult to read his lecture without a sense that this was about the right balance. Banting, who was in the audience, jotted in his desk calendar that Macleod had been “very fair, but not at all unselfish.” Later in the day at a sectional meeting on insulin both Banting and Macleod gave papers on their recent research. Now Banting was less charitable. “Macleod showed lantern slides of ‘his’ work which was mostly negative results but voluminous. He has a diarrhoe of words and experiments & constipation of ideas and results.”33
The sessions that day were particularly interesting to a delegation of professors from the Caroline Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Among its other duties, the institute was responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Rumours from Edinburgh that the discovery of insulin was being considered for the 1923 Nobel Prize were correct. The chairman, secretary, and other members of the institute’s Nobel Committee were there as part of the investigation to determine whether the discovery was worthy of the prize.34
Early in 1922 the Caroline Institute’s Nobel Committee had sent out its annual requests for nominations of individuals worthy of receiving a prize for the discovery in physiology or medicine which, in that year, ha
d, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will, “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Nominations came in during December 1922 and January 1923. After the usual flock of self-nominations by inventors of cancer cures, publicity seekers, and the simply naive (such as the Canadian police magistrate, Emily Murphy, who felt her exposé of opium use on Canada’s west coast merited the 1923-prize) were tossed out, the committee found that a total of fifty-seven individuals had been nominated for the award, many of them by several distinguished scientists. The prize could be awarded to more than one but no more than three of these men.
Frederick Banting had been nominated for the discovery of insulin by G.W. Crile, a distinguished professor of surgery in Cleveland, and also by Francis G. Benedict, a leading researcher in problems of metabolism. Mentioning that “probably no one thing in medicine has stirred the physicians in the United States as much as the development of this pancreatic extract,” Benedict made a point of expressing his belief that none of Banting’s co-workers had contributed anything like an equal share in the researches.
J.J.R. Macleod was also nominated. Professor G.N. Stewart, a Canadian-born friend and former colleague of Macleod’s at Western Reserve University, also a formidable figure in American physiology, based his nomination of Macleod on the discovery of insulin by Macleod “and the young collaborators whose work he has directed” as the culmination of his years of investigation into carbohydrate metabolism.
There was also a nomination of Banting and Macleod jointly. It came from August Krogh, the Danish Nobel laureate who had visited Toronto that November, met the people involved, and was now working on insulin himself. Krogh nominated the Torontonians for the discovery of insulin and their exploration of its clinical and physiological characteristics. From his own most recent work on the hormone, Krogh could verify that insulin was a discovery of vast theoretical scope and great practical importance, exactly the kind of discovery Nobel had hoped to honour. The one difficult question, he wrote, was how to apportion credit for the work in Toronto:
The Discovery of Insulin Page 31