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When did Insulin therapy become common practice?

F

fletchweb

Well-Known Member
I have been on an interesting genealogical journey and as I have a sister who is type 1 and two of my cousins children have type 1 I was curious to see if it would show up in the family tree and from what branch - morbid curiosity, I guess :)

Anyway, last night I finally came across the first person and yes very sad. According to this person's death certificate he died of a diabetic coma at 20 years of age - the date was 1932. Based on my research - Banting and Best discovered Insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921. If my ancestor died of a diabetic coma in hospital - I'm wondering when Insulin therapy finally came in to the main stream. Probably not right away - Anyone Know?
 
librarising said:
@fletchweb In these days of universal health care and health insurance we can forget that our ancestors had to pay for their medicine. Could this have played a part ? Also comparing insulin regimes from then and now is like comparing apples with oranges. Here's a history of Canadian healthcare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Canada
Sad to hear about your forebear.
Lilly started selling insulin around 1922/23
Geoff
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Interesting as he was from Kentucky and decided to move to Ontario at 18 to live with his Uncle (my Great Grandfather) Love to know if he tried to immigrate at that time because of the Canadian Healthcare system and did he already know by this time that he had diabetes. I can only speculate... As well 1922/23 for Lilly insulin - he may have been just a little too late - that would be terrifying!
 
fletchweb said:
Interesting as he was from Kentucky and decided to move to Ontario at 18 to live with his Uncle (my Great Grandfather) Love to know if he tried to immigrate at that time because of the Canadian Healthcare system and did he already know by this time that he had diabetes. I can only speculate... As well 1922/23 for Lilly insulin - he may have been just a little too late - that would be terrifying!
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Here in Canada we didn't have a public funded health care until 1968.
 
I also found an ancestor with diabetes, but much earlier than yours. It was my great great grandfather. He must have had Type 2 although types weren't differentiated in those days. He died in hospital aged 71, according to his death certificate it was "diabetes" He wasn't short of a bob or two, was a successful local business man and property owner. I only have one photo, and he was rather portly. This was 1897.
 
@fletchweb , there's a book Breakthrough....by Thea Cooper, on kindle and print. There's only really a postscript about what happened longer term after the discovery so doesn't answer your question to any real extent but the authors had access to a lot of papers from the major players so it paints a good picture of all the science, politics, personality clashes, deal making and ingenuity going on in the run up to discovery and how it panned out after that.

Some really moving stuff about the lifes of Ts before discovery, then parents coming from all over country once they heard about the experiments and trials to beg for their kids to take part, and the really hard judgment calls the doctors had to make about who to treat when production techniques were still limited so supply was low.

www.breakthroughthebook.com
 
My ex mother in law (92 - still in her own home and ...gulp... still driving!!) lost a sister to diabetes in 1935 at the age of 14 in England - so obviously took a while for it to be generally available over there too. Interesting question @fletchweb
 
The link is to
a set of interviews with people diagnosed in the 20s and 30s .It's from a project run by Oxford which contains interviews with people with diabetes, their families and health care professionals from the 1920s onwards
http://www.diabetes-stories.com/decades2.asp?decade=2030
Of course these are the survivors , although insulin was available , insulin therapy wasn't something that doctors knew how to use and testing the and for a long time to come was a home chemistry experiment. And as pointed out earlier, diabetic comas still happen.
 
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fletchweb said:
Anyone Know?
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I can't give you an exact date until I speak to my father. He was born in 1927 and his older sister was diagnosed as a child and on insulin in the 1930's but not sure exactly when.

Something from Diabetes UK

First successful use
On 11 January 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old boy with diabetes, who lay dying at the Toronto General Hospital, was given the first injection of insulin. However, the extract was so impure that Thompson suffered a severe allergic reaction, and further injections were cancelled.

Over the next 12 days, James Collip worked day and night to improve the ox-pancreas extract, and a second dose was injected on the 23 January. This was completely successful, not only in having no obvious side-effects, but in completely eliminating the glycosuria sign of diabetes.

A dramatic moment
Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.

In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.
 
SueNSW said:
My ex mother in law (92 - still in her own home and ...gulp... still driving!!) lost a sister to diabetes in 1935 at the age of 14 in England - so obviously took a while for it to be generally available over there too. Interesting question @fletchweb
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The NHS was introduced in the UK in 1945. Prior to that people had to be able to pay the doctor. My gran had her teeth out as a 21st birthday present to save her the pain later in life. She told me that was a very common practice before the NHS. If you are interested in early healthcare you could try and get a copy of "Dr Bradley remembers" by Francis Brett Young. Dr Bradley (fictional character) started of in the world of bonesetters and practised during the era of discoveries about hygene.
 
DavidGrahamJones said:
A dramatic moment
Children dying from diabetic ketoacidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.

In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best, and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's a "movie-in-waiting" if ever I heard one !
Wonder why nobody's ever thought to take advantage and make a bob or two out of spreading the word?

Thanks for raising this question @fletchweb; I am not an insulin user, and don't know the answer, but have read lots of very useful information here. Plus - greetings to a fellow family historian.
 
ringi said:
When did quick and easy BG testing come in?
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The meters were available in the 70's but came widely available in the 80's here in the UK, I think I got my first bg meter around 84/85 and paid around £100 for it (the only meter I've ever paid for).

reflolux-S.jpg
 
My grandad was diagnosed in the 70's I think with type 1, he never had a meter it was always a dipstick into his urine. He wasn't very well controlled, although he followed the diet to the letter bless him. I had a lot to do with him in latter years as when he had a hypo I was one of the first they would call as I would just give him glucose to bring him round and not automatically call an ambulance as other family members did. I could confirm the timings with my mum later but it was definitely before I had children and my eldest is 32. I do remember the lead up to his diagnosis because he was losing massive amounts of weight and then he collapsed, I think the diagnosis of type 1 was a relief because the whole family thought he had cancer but he refused to go to the doctor.
 
My uncle was type 1 and he had gangrene of the foot, I was a teenager at the time and then he died, I did like him, such a character, but his type 1 was kept very quiet and not talked about in the 1970's.
 
My grandad actually died after having his foot amputated due to gangrene too, to be fair he was in his 80's.
He was a real character too!
 
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