The Greatest Canadian Invention: Insulin

In slightly-old news, the CBC aired a program last week announcing the Greatest Canadian Invention: the Toronto-created insulin. Other notable Toronto inclusions are the electron microscope, the G-suit, the light bulb (with the patent sold to Edison, somehow a very Toronto thing to do), pablum, and UV degradable plastics. The somewhat random list is still up on the CBC's website, although if there's one selection that isn't debatable it's poutine. I think I would have put it ahead of five-pin bowling, at least. If we had to come up with a list of the Greatest Torontonian inventions, what would top it? I'd nominate the Peameal Bacon Sandwich, but I'm sure we've birthed greater contributions to the city and the world at large. Feel free to drop ideas into the comments section if you think of anything worthy of the honour.
Image from the CBC.
Comments (5)
I work with electron microscopes, and my grandmother takes insulin daily. Toronto certainly has done some great things for medicine and science discovery.
I think you are crazy , the insuline was invented by a roumanian: Nicolae Paulescu (October 30, 1869-July 17, 1931) was a Romanian physiologist, professor of medicine and the discoverer of insulin.
Eight months after Paulescu's works were published, doctor Frederick Grant Banting and biochemist John James Richard Macleod from the University of Toronto, Canada, published their paper on the successful use of a pacreatic extract for normalizing blood sugar (glucose) levels (glycemia) in diabetic dogs. Their paper is a mere confirmatory paper, with direct references to Paulescu's article. However, they misquote that article, enunciating that:
"He [Paulescu] states that injections into peripheral veins produce no effect and his experiments show that second injections do not produce such marked effect as the first",
which is exactly the opposite of what Paulescu found out. Later on, Banting said that
"I regret very much that there was an error in our translation of Professor Paulescu's article, I cannot recollect, after this length of time, exactly what happened (...) I do not remember whether we relied on our own poor French or whether we had a translation made. In any case I would like to state how sorry I am for this unfortunate error (...)"
Surprisingly, Banting and Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin, while Paulescu's pioneering work was being completely ignored by the scientific and medical community. International recognition for Paulescu's merits as the true discoverer of insulin came only 50 years later.
Professor Ian Murray, an internationally regarded physiologist, was particularly active in working to correct the historical wrong against Paulescu. Murray was a professor of physiology at the Anderson College of Medicine in Glasgow, Scotland, the head of the department of Metabolic Diseases at a leading Glasgow hospital, vice-president of the British Association of Diabetes, and a founding member of the International Diabetes Federation. In an article for a 1971 issue of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Murray wrote:
"Insufficient recognition has been given to Paulesco, the distinguished Roumanian scientist, who at the time when the Toronto team were commencing their research had already succeeded in extracting the antidiabetic hormone of the pancreas and proving its efficacy in reducing the hyperglycaemia in diabetic dogs."
Furthermore, Murray reported:
"In a recent private communication Professor Tiselius, head of the Nobel Institute, has expressed his personal opinion that Paulesco was equally worthy of the award in 1923."














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