I. The Birth of an Idea

One of the most dramatic adventures in the history of medicine had an inauspicious beginning in the office of the University of Toronto's Professor of Physiology, J.J.R. MacLeod, on November 8^th, 1920. A shy, inarticulate graduate of the Faculty of Medicine, Frederick G. Banting, came to see Macleod to inquire about the possibility of using the University's facilities to test an idea he had for research on the pancreas.

It was not an easy interview. Banting had no experience at research and knew little about either the pancreas or the disease, diabetes mellitus, for which he hoped to find a treatment. Macleod doubted that the idea Banting was presenting would lead to positive results. But the exact procedures being suggested by Banting did not appear to have been tried by anyone else, and in that situation even negative results could be useful. Macleod was also in the happy position of having an underused facility on his hands. After warning Banting that not much would probably come from the work, and that it would be best to wait until next summer, he offered to let the young man work in his lab.

Copy of a black and white photograph showing F. G. Banting. Inscription on bottom corner of photograph reads: 'To Dr Crane Very Sincerely, Banting. Dec 27/22'

Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941), was a farmer's son from the village of Alliston, Ontario, some 60 kilometres North of Toronto. He worked hard to scrape through secondary school and go on to attend Ontario's provincial University, the University of Toronto. He transferred from Arts into Medicine, graduated with above average standing in the class of 1917, had already enlisted in the Canadian army, and by the summer of 1918 was treating casualties at frontline dressing stations in France as a battalion medical officer. He saw considerable action, and was eventually awarded the Military Cross for courage under fire, before being wounded by shrapnel.

Back in Canada, Banting served a year’s residency in surgery at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, then set up a practice in the small city of London, Ontario, some 175 kilometres west of Toronto. With time on his hands while he waited for the practice to build, Banting took a position as a demonstrator in surgery an anatomy at London's Western University. As part of that job, he had to give his students a talk on the pancreas on Monday, November 1st, 1920.  After preparing the talk, which would certainly have included mention of the issue of whether the pancreas contained an “internal secretion” that was crucial to the control of carbohydrate metabolism and the prevention of diabetes mellitus, Banting picked up a newly arrived issue of Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics.