Steel Magnolias Sparknotes

Kimberly Mccrimmon
English 1102
18 February 2016
Time Through Diabetes
The play Steel Magnolias premiered in 1987 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. Steel Magnolias was written by Robert Harling and it was based off of his experience with his sister’s death due to diabetes. She was born in 1953 and she died in 1985, when she was just 32. Diabetes was discovered by Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer. He was an English physiologist who studied the pancreas. Robert Harling’s sister, Susan Harling, suffered from type 1 diabetes which is when the pancreas does not make insulin. Which means blood glucose cannot enter the cells to be used for energy.
In 1953, when Susan Harling was born, tablets for testing urine glucose became available, and urine test strips started to be used. Everyone was much happier because these options were much more simpler than the original method. The original method was Benedict’s solution which was a chemical reagent commonly used to detect presence of reducing sugars. You had to mix it with urine and heat over boiling water. This was the mark of how to track diabetes started.

During 1955 Sulfonylureas, oral medications that stimulates the pancreas to release more insulin, started to become available.

In 1959 the use of RIA (radioimmunoassay), which is used to detect small amounts of substances in the blood, was used to measure insulin in the blood. This method was used by Solomon Berson, MD and Rosalyn Yalow, PhD. This is when they realized that some people with diabetes made their own insulin. They broke them down into two groups, type 1 diabetes (“insulin-dependent”) and type 2 diabetes (“non-insulin-dependent”). In 1961 a hormone produced by the pancreas called Glucagon is introduced by Eli Lilly and Company as a treatment for severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company founded in

1876.
In the course of 1964 The Ames Company came out with the first color coded strips for testing blood sugar. In 1966 the first successful pancreas transplant was performed at the University of Minnesota Hospital. Before the first human, whole-organ pancreatic transplantation doctors used to use pieces of dog pancreas to stop diabetes. W.D. Kelly performed the first pancreatic transplantation for treatment of type 1 diabetes. In 1970 The Ames Company introduces the first blood sugar meter. Almost 10,000 pancreatic transplantations were recorded by 1998.
In 1971 insulin receptors (an organ or cell able to respond to external stimulus) were discovered on cell membranes. Which means the cell could bind with insulin in the blood. When the cell and insulin binds, the cell can take glucose from the blood and use it for energy. With this new finding made scientist believe that this was the reason why insulin resistance of type 2 diabetes existed. In 1972 The relationship between blood vessel disease and hyperglycemia (too much sugar in the blood) is reported. U100 insulin is introduced. Which is a syringe filled with insulin and it is marked with U100, which is the dosage amount. The dosage amount helped people with diabetes maintain how much they had taken. It also let them know how much they needed to take.
1974 is when the development of the Biostator (artificial pancreas) enabled continuous glucose monitoring and closed loop insulin infusion began. Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLAs) are discovered on cell surfaces by. Human Leukocyte Antigens are molecules capable of persuading an immune response to reject the transplant. It was discovered that people with type 1 diabetes have