Why did I love this book?
Bliss’s classic book is the definitive account of the discovery of insulin by Canadians Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J.R.R. Macleod, and James Collip. I share this story in my book but Bliss delves far deeper into this incredible tale full of drama and human failings.
Bliss describes Banting as a failed surgeon who had a middle-of-the-night epiphany about how to isolate the unknown product of the pancreas’s mysterious islets of Langerhans cells. Eminent scientist Macleod gives Banting a chance and some lab space, but in the end, Banting accuses Macleod of stealing credit for this discovery that turns diabetes from a death sentence into a chronic, manageable illness.
Banting loathes Macleod so much that he almost refuses his Nobel Prize because he is so angry that Macleod will also get one!
1 author picked The Discovery of Insulin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
When insulin was discovered in the early 1920s, even jaded professionals marveled at how it brought starved, sometimes comatose diabetics back to life. In this now-classic history, Michael Bliss unearths a wealth of material, ranging from the unpublished memoirs of scientists to the confidential appraisals of insulin by members of the Nobel Committee. He also resolves a long-standing controversy that dates back to the awarding of the Nobel to F. G. Banting and J. J. R. Macleod for their work on insulin: because each insisted on sharing the prize with an additional associate, medical opinion was intensely divided over the…