Insulin, What's that about??

Insulin is used for the treatment of a disease called diabetes. When a person has this disease, some fault in their body chemistry keeps it from using starches and sugars to make energy. A large gland called the pancreas makes a substance called insulin that the body needs to use starches and sugars. The body of a person with diabetes either does not make enough insulin or does not use its insulin. If this disease goes untreated, the person suffers from extreme thirst, loses weight, feels weak, and may eventually become unconscious and die. 

However, these things need not happen to a person with diabetes now that insulin is manufactured. The diabetic patient can take it by daily injection and a regular diet; they can lead a normal life. Doctors had known for some time that a person suffering from diabetes could not make use of the sugars in their body. The problem was how to provide diabetics with insulin. Scientist thought they knew the answer: give a diabetic insulin taken from the pancreas of a healthy animal. But no one had been able to extract insulin. This was the achievement of Frederick Grant Banting, a Canadian doctor and scientist who was born in 1891 near Alliston, Ontario. He was teaching in London, Ontario, and one evening while preparing a lecture on the pancreas, he suddenly realized how he might extract insulin; He went to the University of Toronto and asked Professor John Macleod, director of a large laboratory, for help. 
 Macleod agreed to let him use the laboratory for a few weeks. In May 1921, with the help of Charles Best, a young graduate student, he set to work. They worked day and night, and within several weeks obtained the first insulin from the pancreas of a dog. By January 1922, after many tests, they were able to give insulin to a diabetic, a young boy near death. He showed immediate improvement too. An important step forward in medical history had been made.