Health & biology · 1922

Insulin

Extracted pancreatic insulin turned type 1 diabetes from a death sentence into a manageable disease.

Frederick Banting, Charles Best, James Collip and John Macleod purified insulin in Toronto and first treated 14-year-old Leonard Thompson in January 1922. Children who would have died within months lived for decades.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Hormones discovered 1902

What it led to 2

Recombinant insulin 1978
GLP-1 insulin action 1987

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Life expectancy in the UK since 1543 Latest: 81.3 years (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Life expectancy at birth Latest: 73.2 years (2023) Source: Our World in Data