Banting Memorial Lecture, 1954: Hormones of the Pituitary Posterior Lobe

This lecture commemorates Frederick Grant Banting, his life and his work, bringing once again into the focus of our immediate attention the achievement for which the world will always keep his name in honor. There is no need, of course, for me to remind you, the members of a Diabetes Association, of this special reason for keeping him in grateful memory. There is no possibility that you will ever forget the enterprise which, some 33 years ago now, he led with such vigor and insistence, and with a youthful enthusiasm unblunted by experience. And there are others, of course, whose work we think of with Banting's, and who are still alive, to know that we remember. There is Charles Best, Banting's younger comrade and his full partner in the work which gave the first clear proof that insulin had a real existence, and that its extraction on a practical scale ought not to be beyond the reach of conservative methods, when these could be developed in detail. It is good to know that Professor Best, still at the height of his powers, is leading an eager team of his colleagues and pupils in Toronto, and fulfilling the brilliant promise of that early triumph, when he shared with Banting in the great discovery which we commemorate. There is J. B. Collip, too, whose work did much to speed the developments required to bring insulin within the range of practical and regular production, from ordinary, slaughterhouse pancreas. Professor Collip, we rejoice to know, is also still fully active, leading his own research team, and carrying an administrative burden for the new generation, as Dean of the Medical Faculty in London, Ontario. And there was J. J. R. Macleod, head of the Physiological Department in Toronto when the early work on insulin was done there, who was prompt to organize men of his own training into a team to hasten its practical development, as well as to begin the study of its significance for normal and fundamental physiology. Professor Macleod, however, afflicted by ill-health, returned later to his native Scotland, where he died some years ago.