Diabetes Symptoms Weblog

Hi all, I got this information from William H.
Polonsky’s book Diabetes Burnout
(p.168-170).<br
Len or Bonnie, feeling that diabetes has doomed you
to a short and painful life, here is a remarkable
story that may help you regain a sense of perspective.
In 1980, Professor Michael Bliss, a historian at the
University of Toronto, decided to research the story behind
the discovery of insulin in the early 1920s. In
addition to describing the scientific investigations of
the codiscoverers, Banting and Best, he examined the
cases of the first recipients of insulin. Br. Banting’s
prize patient was a 15-year-old named Elizabeth Hughes,
whose father, Charles Evans Hughes, was then Secretary
of State under President Warren Harding. Like most

others with type 1 diabetes at the time, Elizabeth was
destined to die at a very early age. Indeed, by the time
she reached Dr. Banting’s office in Toronto in late
1922, she weighed only 45 pounds and was close to
death. However, the discovery of insulin changed
everything. Elizabeth began to receive twice-daily injections
of the newly discovered hormone, and under Dr.
Banting’s guidance, she recovered rapidly. After returning
home, she kept in touch with Dr. Banting for several
years, with the last letter arriving in
1926.<br
that, but it seemed likely that she had died shortly
thereafter. After all, she was taking wildly varying doses of
a brownish, impure extract of insulin mixed with
God-knows-what-else, and there was no technology available for
monitoring changes in blood glucose. Given such primitive
conditions, long-term complications had surely arisen and
Elizabeth was unlikely to have survived for very
long.<br
had lived and to what degree she had suffered from
complications. In his investigation, he discovered that
Elizabeth had married a prominent young lawyer in 1930 and,
to his amazement, was still alive in 1948 at the
time of her father’s death. Professor Bliss’
continuing search revealed that Elizabeth’s husband was
still alive in 1980. With some excitement, Professor
Bliss wrote to him, inquiring about his wife’s
fatewhen had she died and what had been the later course
of her illness? To his great shock, Professor Bliss
soon received the following letter in
response:<br

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