On 11 January 1922 at Toronto General Hospital, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, who was dying of type 1 diabetes, received the first injection of an extract of pancreas prepared by Frederick Banting, Charles Best, James Collip and John Macleod. After a purer extract was given 12 days later, his blood sugar fell sharply, and he lived 13 more years. Before insulin, a diagnosis of the disease in a child was a death sentence within a year or two. Banting and Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize, and shared their prize money with Best and Collip.
Before and after
- 1922Discovery of hafnium
- 1922Founding of BirdLife International
- 1922Founding of Australia men's national soccer team
- 1922Harappa and Mohenjo-daro are excavated
- 11 January 1922Insulin is first used to treat diabetes
- 17 January 1922Birth of Betty White
- 2 February 1922Publication of Ulysses
- 1 March 1922Birth of Yizhak Rabin
- 5 March 1922Birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini
More in Science & technology
- 1931Kurt Godel proves his incompleteness theorems
- 1933Karl Jansky detects radio waves from the Milky Way
- 4 March 1936First flight of LZ 129 Hindenburg
- 1 February 1942Launch of Voice of America
- October 1943Streptomycin, the first antibiotic that works against tuberculosis, is discovered
- 1944Avery, MacLeod and McCarty show that DNA carries genes
The era
This moment belongs to the Modern era (1914 CE to 1945 CE), world wars and a changing world. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.