Good friend of our club, Dr Kenneth McHardy of Aberdeen, has published a wonderful article, “Realigning history: The Toronto Four insulin discovery team,” in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. McHardy describes the decades of effort made to properly recognize the role Professor JJR Macleod played in the insulin discovery of 1921-23 in Toronto. Through the work of John Otto and Kimberlie Hamilton, a striking memorial statue of Macleod was created in Aberdeen’s Duthie Park. Last September 2024, the Toronto Medical Historical Club was proud to participate in a celebration marking the addition of four bronze plaques memorializing the “Toronto Four”–Frederick Banting, Charles Best, JB Collip and JJR Macleod–the collaborators who gave clinically-useful insulin to the world.
Tag: Frederick Banting
Elizabeth Hughes in BBC News Brasil
Club member Dr Christopher Rutty lends his expertise to this new article “Elizabeth Hughes, a menina que sobreviveu à ‘terapia da fome’ — e foi salva pela insulina” (“Elizabeth Hughes, the girl who survived ‘starvation therapy’ — and was saved by insulin”) in BBC News Brasil about Elizabeth Hughes and early diabetes management. As a young girl, Hughes was one of the first people with diabetes to receive insulin from Dr Frederick Banting. (This article is in Portuguese but if you wish to read it in English, you might use Google Translate.)
Chris Rutty explains that Hughes “became a researcher of the very disease she had,” and that in addition to being the daughter of US Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, and to being at the right place at the right time, “she was very brilliant, intelligent, and committed.” Chris also explains that she was ground-breaking, as “one of the first people with diabetes to inject herself with insulin — something that is now routinely done by millions of patients with the disease around the world.”
Chris also relates the fact that the late historian Michael Bliss, also a club member, met Hughes when he was researching his book The Discovery of Insulin (1982). She was a very private individual and initially hesitant to speak about her experience, but came to understand the importance of her story. She allowed all the the materials to be released after her death.
Toronto Four Symposium & Celebration in Aberdeen
View the “Toronto Four” Symposium videos, University of Aberdeen, 6 September 2024
Club members John Dirks, Peter Kopplin, Christopher Rutty and Alison Li, along with colleagues Gary Goldberg, Erling Norrby of Stockholm and James Wright of Calgary and partners Christine Kopplin, Andrea Rutty, and Elsebeth Welander-Berggren were warmly welcomed to Aberdeen by John Otto and Kimberlie Hamilton, co-founders of the JJR Macleod Memorial Statue Society, and by our good friend Kenneth McHardy.
Prize Fight: Canada’s First Nobel Prize
Ivan Semeniuk has an excellent article in today’s Globe & Mail titled “Prize Fight: One century later, experts revisit the hidden feud behind Canada’s First Nobel,” describing the complex history behind the award to Banting and Macleod for the discovery of insulin. Semeniuk attended the symposium hosted by the Toronto Medical Historical Club last month and describes the hidden tensions among the key figures as well as the evolution of the story of the discovery over the past 100 years. Several speakers at the symposium, John Dirks, James Wright, and Ken McHardy, are interviewed in the article.
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize for the Discovery of Insulin to Banting and Macleod: Impact and Legacy
On November 27, 2023, the Toronto Medical Historical Club hosted a successful symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Frederick Banting and JJR Macleod for the discovery of insulin. The event brought together a distinguished panel of speakers to reflect on the impact and legacy of the insulin discovery and to inspire future research advancement.