The First Miracle Drug

In college I had a friend who was funny, giddy and smart, a musician with a puckish sense of humor. Kay was also the first diabetic I knew personally. Her management of the disease was offhand and practical; I got to know what to do if she had a crisis (packet of sugar under the tongue, reassess) and I watched her inject herself with insulin. I learned that on one occasion when she miscalculated and started hallucinating, everyone on campus suddenly had a wolf's head. The disease wasn't who she was, but the way she dealt with it definitely was. And being a writer and thus, by definition, a ghoul, I was fascinated. Kay was the first person that I knew who had a chronic disease that required "management". But luckily for her, diabetes was by that time manageable.

In 1921, before the development of a process to extract insulin from the other hormones secreted by the pancreas, the only treatment for diabetes was an egg- and salad-based that left its sufferers alive, but fearfully emaciated. It appears to be one of those human stories that accompany developments in medicine (wait! I worked in a lab all summer and you come home when it gets cool and get all the credit? I don't care if you're my boss!) and has a particular human face (the daughter of the then-US. Secretary of State went to Toronto, where the drug was developed, for the miracle cure). And the New-York Historical Society has an exhibition on now about the whole story.

I'm not in New York, obviously. If you are, and share my fascination with medical history, go see this and come tell me about it, will you?