Talk About Insulin, Part 1 (1959)

okay this story of insulin is told you by two men whose experience and authority in this field is unique on your right is professor charles best who the latest frederick banting discovered insulin in the center is dr rd lawrence himself one of the first to receive insulin and whose professional life since then has been devoted to the relief of diabetes i am dr liston sitting on your left in fact did you actually discover insulin it's a little difficult to fix an exact date just toward the end of july 26 or 27th of july 1921 when we first saw the um dramatic lowering of the blood sugar of a dog when we gave it a an extract from pancreas that we thought was potent our lives fred banting and i were were waiting for this we had uh planned a direct attack we prepared our diabetic dogs that they died without insulin and we hope to find insulin and i think the end of july and august uh marked the date of the first successful injections in toronto dr lawrence would you well charlie i often wanted to know i know there were two of you flared afterwards sir sir foreign and yourself i wonder who realized the first of the terrific discovery you've made and who spoke first about it and what you said to each other well i think he was leaning over my shoulder when i was doing the the blood sugars i did the chemistry and he did the surgery i suppose um well i wouldn't like to say that i saw the lowering before he did because he was there all the time i'm sure he noticed the uh clinical improvement in the dogs yes before i did let's say i saw the lowering of the blood sugar before he did the chemical estimations the results of them and what did you say or what who spoke fast can you remember any anything that well imagine we turned to each other and said i think we've got it yes sort of simultaneously what age were you at this stage 27 and you had been an active person playing hockey and playing everything yeah playing everything just out of the first world war that sort of stuff dr lawrence when you found that even chemical pathology was too much for you what did you do then so i went home for a bit but i couldn't bear the atmosphere of dying at home died well i knew i was going to die everybody at that age with diabetes then died within four or five years whatever they did so i skipped i wanted to make a little money and i wanted to have a very quiet life so i went to italy and practiced in florence as a general practitioner yes were you an italian speaking well i was in a week or two but i mean i practiced the english and americans after all yes it was that that sort of practice i went for and i did quite well when i could keep awake a little bit away yes even when there was a new and rare patient which wasn't very common at first i was asleep talking to them yeah and i used to fall downstairs and couldn't walk up thank god there was a lift in my when i left that was in 1921 i was the only one and uh a doctor at my hospital wrote and said i hear that something for diabetes called insulin in canada sounds good and i said well i'm not paying any attention to it until you know more about it and they say it's genuine i've tried so many things that have turned out to be quackers for diabetes that i'm not going to believe a hopeful thing and then he cabled me and said i've got insulin it works come home quick so i did i just bundled into a car and got a chauffeur italian fella who wanted to go to soho and see his uncle and we got home together and i started insulin in a day or two i knew i was going to be all right so at the time that dr banting and bess discovered instrument dr lawrence you were indeed a dying man yes more than dying desperate as well and this moment arrived and you were cable for and you came back straight away as you knew then i knew after the first dose which made me clear of sugar for the first time for about six months because it all was going to be well and indeed i gained four pounds in the first f four days of insulin dr lawrence you'll rarely owe your life to dr best millions of others yes very many millions but i'm to me i'm the most important i think you're one of the most important if not the most important but has someone not said something of that kind yes secretary johnson who's sort of the doyan of diabetic specialist the world over has called our friend robin lawrence the most famous living diabetic and he did that because robin has helped so many other diabetics in clinical ways and helping the organization of societies here in england and he was the first president of the international federation of diabetics he really started that and put it on its feet and it's going to go i think now may i come back to you now you have some more highlights i'm sure to tell this about well fred banding and i had a wonderful time together in 1921. we were alone and everything we did was new it's not very often you get that situation in research but that was true in 1921 we found if we gave the dogs our diabetic dogs too much insulin they got low blood sugar if we gave them a little sugar they felt better again and we had in mind the use of insulin in patients and tried to anticipate that by studying our dogs as carefully as we could i think we showed the effect of uh insulin on our diabetic dog 75 times without any failures before the first patient was treated now that patient got his incident on january the 11th 1922 and dr lawrence was in florence well yes about that time but later a little bit later but uh