The Structure of Insulin

It is curious to read once again the text of the paper by Dr. Moses Barron1 which was first read by Fred Banting on October 30, 1920, and which stirred him so urgently to attempt the isolation of insulin. He stopped at the library casually on the way home from the medical school and looked at the first paper in Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics. Because he had to talk to students on the following day on the function of the pancreas and because its title was “The relation of the islets of Langerhans to Diabetes with special reference to cases of Pancreatic Lithiasis,” he took the journal home with him. The sentences he underlined were “Arnozan and Vaillard ligated the pancreatic ducts in rabbits and found that within twenty-four hours the ducts became dilated, the epithelial cells were desquamated and there were protoplasmic changes in the acinic cells … Ssobolew ligated the ducts in rabbits, cats and dogs. He found a gradual atrophy and sclerosis of the organ and relatively intact islets and no glycosuria.” At 9 p.m. Banting rang up Dr. Tew to say that he had an idea-that it might be possible to isolate the antidiabetic hormone from the islets by first allowing the acinar cells, containing digestive ferments, to atrophy. It was an idea so powerful that it changed his life and the lives of manv others.