Penicillin And Insulin In The 1920's

The decade between 1920 and 1930 was a milestone for many health breakthroughs. The work that was done in the 1920’s had a major impact in increasing overall life expectancy. Penicillin and insulin are an easy fix for sore throats and diabetes, respectively.

Having an ear infection in 2015 is no big deal. You hop in your car and drive to your doctor’s office. Your doctor sees you, diagnoses you with an ear infection and prescribes you, penicillin like they have dozens of times before. Today penicillin and other antibiotics are taken for granted. Before the 1920’s bacterial infections would do a lot more harm than just having an ear ache. If penicillin was not invented who knows how delayed today’s medicine would be.

Antibiotics are a relatively

new discovery. Penicillin was founded by Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Fleming was attending Saint Mary’s Hospital Medical School to become a bacteriologist. He was in school until he served his country by being a medic at a battlefield hospital in the western front in France during World War I. While the war happened Fleming witnessed many soldiers wounded in combat. He saw the effects of antiseptics used to treat injured soldiers and noticed how in most cases it made wounds worse than better. After World War I, Fleming went back to school now inspired to find a better medicine to treat injuries.
After studying staphylococci cultures, on September 28, 1928 Fleming stumbled upon his discovery by noticing that one of the cultures was infected by fungus. Fleming found that the culture contaminated with fungus had been destroyed by the colonies of staphylococci. This finding would come to change medicine forever by being the world’s first antibiotic.
Fleming investigated further and found that his penicillium mold stopped the growth of bacteria and was able to combat pathogens. Penicillin is able to kill some bacteria from forming new cell walls. At first Fleming’s clinical tests were inconclusive because it had originally been used as surface antiseptic. Gram positive pathogens that caused meningitis, scarlet fever, gonorrhea, syphilis, diphtheria and pneumonia are no longer a problem. Before antibiotics people could die from having an insignificant injury such as a minor scrap or starch.
Fleming went on to establish a massive pharmaceutical company where he created more variates of penicillin. In the United States today death by infectious bacterial diseases are now only one-twentieth of what they used to be in the 1900’s. Sir Alexander Fleming went on to win The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945.
In 1921 Canadian physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles H.

Best discovered insulin. “Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that allows your body to turn sugar from carbohydrates in food that you eat for energy or to store glucose for future use.” (Hess-Fischl). Before insulin was created, people with diabetes had a little to no chance of a long life.

Banting and Best found the hormone insulin while performing experiments on the pancreases of dogs. The experiments consisted of the dogs having their pancreases removed and then subsequently showed signs of diabetes. Once removed, Best and Banting turned the pancreas into an injectable extract and inserted daily into the dogs. The injections helped the dogs regain their health.

After experimenting on dogs, Professor John Maceod provided the pair with cow pancreases which was when the extract was named insulin. A biochemist named Bertram Collip joined the research group to help find a way to purify insulin so it could be tested on humans. Banting and Best took the experiments to the extreme when they decided to test the insulin by injecting themselves. The injection caused the two to become weak and dizzy –both are signs of hypoglycemia, a condition which occurs when one’s glucose levels fall too low. After the team figured out how to treat hypoglycemia and understood the required doses, they felt confident enough to try insulin on

patients.
It was not until 1922 when insulin was administered to their first patient: a fourteen year boy named Leonard Thompson with type 1 diabetes.

Before insulin patients with type 1 diabetes were given short life spans (a few months) and were recommended by doctors to be on a “starvation diet”. Patients were undernourished and some even starved to death. The starvation diet weakened immune systems and could even stunt growth for young children. With insulin, the fourteen year old boy was able to live for thirteen more years before dying of pneumonia. Even though the patient died later on in life, the result of the use of insulin added many years to Leonard’s life opposed to just a few

months.
One of the first and most famous patient being treated with insulin is a girl named Elizabeth Hughes. Elizabeth was the daughter of Charles Evans Hughes, a Governor of New York, a Republican candidate for the 1916 presidency and a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Elizabeth was being treated by Frederick M. Allen, one of the most respected diabetes specialists in America at that time. Allen put Elizabeth on a fasting diet when she was eleven years old. Initially, Elizabeth’s weight was 75 pounds. On the starvation diet her weight fluctuated from 75 pounds to her lowest weight of being 45 pounds. Her caloric intake began at 500 calories daily and a day of fasting per week. Once her glycosuria (sugar in urine) subsided Elizabeth was allowed to have a caloric intake of 1,250 calories (except on fast days). Elizabeth’s health deteriorated in the winter of 1921-1922; so much so her mother begged Doctor Banting to include Elizabeth in his insulin trial. The insulin worked wonders for Elizabeth. Elizabeth regained her weight and was able to graduate from college, got marry and had children while being on insulin. Elizabeth lived until 1981 where she died at 73.
After the news of how successful insulin was, people with type 1 diabetes began reaching out to Banting and Best for help. Banting and Best came to find out that insulin was a remedy even for people who had death knocking on their door. As time progressed Best and Banting improved the production of insulin and were able to have it manufactured in mass quantities. In 1923, Doctor Banting and Professor Macleod were given the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In conclusion, the 1920’s were filled with medical breakthroughs. Who can say how many lives were saved.