Bullets zip past as bombs rained down.
A young doctor is pinned down along with stretcher bearers, and their destination seems as far away as the moon.
They’re headed to an aid station to treat wounded men clinging to life.
With that in mind, the doctor musters up all his courage and jumps into action.
He runs into chaos as the world explodes around him.
But then as he reaches down to open the door, everything goes white.
His senses overwhelm as he hears nothing and everything all at once.
When his world comes into focus, he feels his arm on fire.
As he looks down his mind races to understand what just happened.
Metal has pierced his flesh.
He is wounded but not dead so he opens the door and steps inside the aid station to finish the job he was there to do.
Save lives.
It’s something he would go on to do on a much grander scale.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx.
This month, I’m sharing stories of the people who have made the list of The Greatest Canadians and in this episode, we look at one of our country’s most famous doctors.
This is…. The story of… Frederick Banting!
Frederick Banting was born in a small farmhouse near Alliston, Ontario on Nov. 14, 1891.
He was the youngest of six children for William Banting and Margaret Grant.
His childhood was spent on the family farm where hard work and practicality was the norm.
Nothing about his early life suggested he would one day change medicine forever.
The farm did well and the family was prosperous.
There was food on the table, warm clothes in the winter, and plenty of things to do to keep the children occupied.
Frederick was a shy child, his siblings were older and some by more than a few years, so he was lonely and isolated for most of his childhood.
“My older brothers could not be bothered with me for the most part.”
He started school at seven years old but didn’t excel. He was often bullied and struggled with spelling, so he preferred to spend time at the farm.
However, as he progressed, he did well in physics and chemistry even if he had to repeat English, narrowly passed Latin and failed French.
No one thought that he would ever become one of the most famous Canadians in history. His principal said,
“We would not have picked him for one on whom fame would settle.”
He definitely wasn’t a prodigy. But he was persistent and managed to graduate high school in July 1910 and then had to decide what his future would be.
His brothers were farmers; his sister was living in Paris where she was learning to paint.
But Frederick was the youngest and trying to figure out what to do he enrolled in a general arts program at Victoria College in Toronto where he struggled.
GRANT CLIP [1:11 – 1:24]
That’s Grant Maltman, the curator at Banting House, and he said that trip changed his life forever because when Frederick returned, he made one crucial change.
He switched to medicine and went from a failing student to an excellent one.
He had finally found his footing but then… the war came. Like so many young men of his generation, the First World War interrupted everything.
On Aug. 16, 1914, the same day that Canada declared war on Germany, he tried to enlist but was denied on account of his poor eyesight.
But remember… Frederick was nothing if not persistent and undeterred, he attempted to enlist again in October.
He was once again denied.
Time passed a by 1915, the reality of the war dawned on the Allied nations, the need for men on the front lines far outweighed the supply requirements for enlistment loosened.
Frederick attempted to join once more and this time he was accepted.
Allies may have needed troops, but Frederick had something else they wanted.
Medical training.
But he didn’t go overseas right away.
Instead, he spent his fourth year of medical school focused on clinical work at Toronto General Hospital and his first operation was draining a soldier’s abscess.
His fifth and final year was condensed down to five months and on Dec. 9, 1916, Frederick Banting graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine.
The next day, he reported for military duty.
He was quickly promoted to lieutenant and shipped out from Halifax on March 26, 1917.
When he arrived in England, he was posted to the Granville Special Hospital in Kent and for the next 13 months, he assisted Clarence L. Starr, the chief surgeon of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children back home.
Then… he was transferred to France in June 1918 where he would be much closer to the action.
For the first time, the war wasn’t a distant abstract thought.
Every day, soldiers were brought in who had been shredded by machine gun fire or nearly torn apart by artillery.
Every shift meant a bleeding and dying man would be in front of him on the operating table.
Frederick would tend to and dress the wounded for hours and days on end at an aid post near the front lines.
Danger was ever present.
During one battle in 1918, a German soldier ran into his aid post where a patient, saved him by shooting the German at the door.
From then on, each passing day, brought the battle closer and closer to him.
Until one day, it arrived with a bang.
In late-September 1918, Frederick was caring for the wounded in a German military hospital the Canadians had taken over after the Battle of Canal du Nord.
That’s when Grant Maltman the curator of the Banting Museum said Frederick’s war came to an end,
GRANT CLIP [7:01 – 7:19] 18 seconds
Major L.C. Palmer, Frederick’s commanding officer, ordered him evacuated to be treated but he defied the orders and helped triage patients for another t 17 hours.
Grant said the defiance made Palmer livid.
GRANT CLIP [7:55 – 8:11]
Palmer may have been mad, but he also respected the heroic effort and recommended Frederick be decorated for his bravery and a few months later, he was awarded the Military Cross.
By then he was in a hospital bed healing, and he wrote to his mother and said,
“My dearest mother. This letter will be short left hand. I was slightly wounded yesterday in the right forearm. Had operation last night and shrapnel removed from between bones. I feel pretty good, only tired. I have just had a big, hot lovely dinner. Everyone is as kind as can be now, please don’t worry. I am the luckiest boy in France.”
He returned to Canada in 1919 and immediately completed his surgical training in Toronto.
That same year, he took an internship at The Hospital for Sick Children.
Established in 1875 by Elizabeth McMaster, the hospital has always been a leader in pediatrics care.
In 1908, it was the first place in Toronto with a milk pasteurization facility and decades later researchers l invented the infant cereal Pablum to combat infant malnutrition.
While Banting desperately wanted to work at the hospital, he was unable to get a spot on staff and left in 1920.
With no clear path or major success in Toronto, he moved to London, Ontario to set up his own medical practice.
He didn’t take over from an established doctor, and his office was in his home, away from high traffic areas.
He didn’t have his first patient for 28 days after he opened.
Grant said… simply put…. Business was slow.
GRANT CLIP [11:54 – 12:05] 9 seconds
To make extra money he began teaching orthopedics and anthropology at the University of Western Ontario.
Despite the lectures, his debts piled up.
Little did he know, he was about to change the future of medicine with just one lecture.
But before we get to Frederick’s discovery let’s go back about 3,500 years ago, give or take a century, to an unknown doctor writing the Ebers papyrus.
This 20-metres long scroll contains 842 formulas and remedies for various conditions and injuries.
Want to cure a migraine? Take a clay effigy of a crocodile, stuff the mouth with herbs, and then bind it to the head with a linen strip inscribed with the names of Egyptian gods.
Maybe this was effective, maybe not. I’m a historian not a doctor.
But the papyrus is important for another reason.
It contains the earliest written record of diabetes.
The papyrus details a treatment fora person urinating too much, or if their urine has a sweet taste to it. Both are common symptoms of diabetes.
For those symptoms it recommends measuring a glass filled with pond water, mixed with elderberry, fibres of a plant, fresh milk, and green dates.
Another option was a rectal injection of olive oil, honey, beer, sea salt and fruit seeds.
Please note, Canadian History Ehx does not recommend or endorse trying either of these methods.
Now with that in mind… let’s jump ahead a few thousand years to the 19th century.
By now, diabetes was being treated through bloodletting and opium.
Some doctors even recommended that patients eat as much as possible to make up for the loss of nutrients through urinating.
They also encouraged extra large amounts of sugar.
As you can imagine this leads to many early deaths.
By the end of the century, doctors realized that fasting provided some success in controlling the symptoms of diabetes.
Patients were then given a sugar-free and low-carb diet.
This starvation diet, developed by Frederick Madison Allen, could extend the life of diabetics, but there was still no real treatment.
By the 1910s, research showed that the cause of diabetes seemed to be localized to the pancreas.
German doctor Georg Ludwig Zuelzer experimented with pancreatic extracts to treat diabetes but had limited success due to side-effects and the inability to purify the extracts.
After the First World War, other doctors were making headway but only one would make the discovery.
And that would happen during a sleepless night in 1920.
In October 1920, Frederick Banting was asked to give a talk on the pancreas at the University of Western, Ontario.
He was preparing for the lecture when he came across an article written by American doctor Moses Barron.
Barron described an autopsy of a patient who had a pancreatic stone obstructing the pancreatic duct.
This left most of the islet cells which produce, store and release insulin intact.
In Type 1 Diabetes, these cells are destroyed, preventing insulin production.
At 2 a.m. on Oct. 31, 1920, Frederick Banting was trying to sleep when he had an epiphany.
He realized that intact islets could be recovered if most of the pancreas was gone.
In that moment he wrote on a piece of paper his hypothesis
“Ligate pancreatic ducts of dog. Keep dogs alive till acini degenerative leaving islets. Try to isolate the internal secretion of those and relieve glycosuria.”
Grant that notes include one of Frederick’s biggest weaknesses and the reason he struggled in school.
GRANT CLIP [15:49 – 16:00] 11 seconds
The following morning, Frederick Banting spoke with F.R. Miller, the professor of physiology at the University of Western Ontario.
Miller advised him to go to the University of Toronto. In the spring of 1921, Frederick met with J.R.R. Macleod, the professor of physiology at the University of Toronto to present his research and gain support.
And although Macleod was skeptical, he saw promise so on May 17, 1921, Frederick Banting began his research, and Macleod would oversee the project.
He also arranged for two undergraduates Charles Best and Clark Noble to assist, but Frederick only needed one, so he chose his assistant with a flip of a coin.
Charles Best won… allegedly…Best says the coin flip never happened, while Banting said it did. Frederick Banting could not have chosen a better assistant.
Charles Best was brilliant.
At the age of 16, he had enrolled in medical school after seeing his Aunt Anna die from diabetes.
By 1921, he had completed his Bachelor of Arts in physiology and biochemistry.
Now together in the lab, Frederick Banting and Charles Best got down to work.
By July 30, 1921, they were able to isolate an extract from the islets cells of a dog and then injected them into a diabetic one.
The results showed a reduction in blood sugar by 40 percent in just an hour.
That impressed their supervisor JRR Macleod so much he moved them to a better lab and gave them more dogs.
Grant said the men had been working nonstop from May to July and the pressure was getting to them.
GRANT CLIP [17:12 – 17:20] 8 seconds
The biggest time suck was waiting for weeks to extract insulin from the dogs.
So, Frederick suggested getting insulin from the pancreas of a calf fetus.
They turned to calves from the William Davies slaughterhouse in Toronto and discovered that the extracts were just as good as those that came from dogs.
They kept working and then they successfully extracted insulin from an adult cow in December 1921.
The focus of their research then changed to the purification of the insulin and biochemist James Collip was brought onto the team.
Within a month, Frederick and the team had something that would change medicine forever.
Leonard Thompson was a 13-year-old boy from the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto who had been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
He was being treated at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Like others at the time, he had been placed on a starvation diet in the hopes of controlling the disease and extending his life.
Enter… Frederick Banting.
On Jan. 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson was given the first dose of insulin derived from Frederick’s work.
Unfortunately, there were still impurities, and Leonard developed a severe allergic reaction.
For the next 12 days, Frederick’s team worked day and night to purify the solution, but it wasn’t until Jan. 23 that Leonard was given a new injection.
This time there we no side effects and so the medical team proceeded with daily injections over the course of two weeks.
Leonard’s health improved immensely and he would go on to live until he was 26 years old before he died of pneumonia.
Before Frederick’s invention, children with Type 1 diabetes typically lived only a few months to a maximum of two years after diagnosis.
It was often referred to as a death sentence, because children with rapid-onset diabetes usually died within one year, with many succumbing to diabetic ketoacidosis.
The next child to be treated was 12-year-old Elizabeth Hughes, the daughter of US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.
Elizabeth became the first American patient to receive insulin.
Because she had been on the starvation diet, she weighed only 45 pounds when she received the injection but very quickly, she was well enough to gain weight and returned to Washington by October 1922.
She went on to live until she was 73 years old and by 1981, she had received 42,000 injections of insulin.
Meanwhile in 1922, in only a few months, Frederick’s team had discovered the first real treatment for diabetes, and it would change the lives of millions.
The invention was worth a fortune, but the team was reluctant to patent the process for insulin because it violated medical ethics.
But Frederick realized that if they didn’t patent it, their research could be hijacked by a third party and safe distribution could be compromised in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
The team sent a letter to the University of Toronto that stated,
“The patent would not be used for any other purpose than to prevent the taking out of a patent by other persons. When the details of the method of preparation are published anyone would be free to prepare the extract, but no one could secure a profitable monopoly.”
On Jan. 15, 1923, the patent was assigned to the University of Toronto Board of Governors for the token cost of one dollar.
It is often repeated online that when Frederick Banting sold the patent, he stated publicly that he did so because the discovery belonged to the world.
That’s a great sentiment but Grant says it probably didn’t happen.
GRANT CLIP [20:01 – 20:27] 26 seconds
With the patent being public so came the accolades In August 1923, Frederick graced the cover of Time Magazine, the first Canadian to ever have the honour.
Two months later on Oct. 26, 1923, news came that Frederick Banting and J.R.R. Macleod had won the Nobel Prize.
At only 31 years old, Frederick became not only the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but also the first Canadian to receive a Nobel Prize.
I Lester B. Pearson would be the next Canadian to win one when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957.
The prize is not just a medal it’s also monetary and Frederick split the winnings with his assistant Charles Best because he felt he always believed in the project.
In his mind Macleod had been skeptical until they had been able to extract insulin while Best had been by his side from the beginning.
Macleod split his prize money with James Collip.
But many felt the prize should have gone to Best and in fact, in 1972, the Nobel Committee publicly stated that omitting Best from the prize was a mistake.
Meanwhile back in 1923 by the end of October, just three years from the sleepless night that started it all… Frederick Banting was at a banquet being held in his honor at the University of Toronto as he spoke to the crowd, he said.
“The honors which have come, are only added responsibilities. We must now not think of the past but of the future. The greatest honor we can have is the appreciation of the patient who suffers from diabetes. We hope for greater and better work in the future.”
Discovering insulin defined the rest of his life.
That same year he was appointed to the new Banting and Best Chair of Medical Research at the University of Toronto.
The Government of Canada also provided him with $7,500 a year lifetime annuity to continue his work.
76,000 people watched him give a speech at the opening day of the Canadian Exhibition where he thanked his colleagues and the federal and provincial government for funding his work.
Banting’s proud parents were in the audience, and when asked if she was proud of her son, his mother said,
“Not proud, thankful.”
The following year, he received five honorary degrees and married Marion Robertson.
The couple remained together for eight years, and had one child, William.
Frederick Banting was the most famous doctor in Canada, and quite possibly the world, and that came with pressure.
Could he cure more diseases? In a year he had developed a treatment for diabetes, so what else could he do?
Maybe he could even cure cancer.
Those around him saw him struggle with fame and he much preferred being a small-town doctor because the pressure was immense.
He was driven to show he wasn’t a one trick pony and Grant said it led to a complicated relationship with his accomplishment.
GRANT CLIP [27:08 – 27:22] 14 seconds
Frederick turned his focus to cancer research.
He then studied the substance secreted by honeybees, royal jelly, to help revive victims of drowning but this too amounted to nothing.
Even when he felt like he was making progress, Grant said his fame almost always got in the way.
GRANT CLIP [28:09 – 28:44] 35 seconds
Frustrated with where things were and the constant pressures he turned back to something he had loved as a child.
Painting.
He said,
“The more I think of the city, the more I want to live in the country and the more I think about being a professor of research the more I want to be an artist.”
He longed to have time on his hands. To fill his days painting.
When he was younger his first paintings were done on the back of the cardboard shirts that were packed by the cleaners
Grant says some of those can be found in the museum.
GRANT CLIP [22:08 – 22:18] 10 seconds
When he returned to painting his favourite subjects were the beautiful rural landscapes of Ontario.
Those amateur paintings brought him into the orbit of The Group of Seven, the legendary landscape painters who revolutionized the Canadian art scene of the 1920s.
Frederick became close friends with A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris, who appreciated his works.
Jackson said,
“He did not want to make a business of art and would tell purchasers to buy a Lismer or something else and then he would exchange it for one of his.”
In the summer of 1927, Frederick joined Jackson on a trip to the Arctic.
Grant said the trip broadened his artistic landscape.
GRANT CLIP [24:46 – 25:14] 28 seconds
It also opened his eyes to what was happening in Canada’s north.
Travelling along the Slave River and Mackenzie River. on the Hudson’s Bay Company paddle-wheeler SS Distributor, he discovered that the passengers and crew were unknowingly spreading influenza.
The disease quickly swept through Indigenous settlements, decimating populations.
Once he returned home, he spoke with a Toronto Star reporter about the trip on the condition that statements about the Hudson’s Bay Company remain off the record.
The reporter ignored their agreement.
The article quoted Frederick saying that fur trade heavily favoured the Hudson’s Bay Company, who bought $100,000 worth of fox skins, but only paid the Indigenous $5,000 in goods.
The fur trade commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company called his remarks false and slanderous.
He may have been angry that an off the record comment made it on to the record, but he refused to back down from the statement once it was published.
. In a subsequent report to the Canadian government, he said that infant mortality in the Arctic was high because mothers were undernourished before giving birth. He put the blame squarely on the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The company had a policy of providing wheat rich food, tea, tobacco and biscuits to the Inuit that did not provide enough nourishment.
Frederick said the Inuit hunters became trappers and depended on the Hudson’s Bay Company.
While his statements may have ruffled some feathers it led to some changes by the HBC in the Arctic and the advice was eventually appreciated by the company, and he even received a Christmas card from the HBC Governor.
When Frederick wasn’t painting or fighting for Indigenous rights he was researching.
Always looking for new medical advancements and even launched Canada’s first efforts into aviation medicine which is a specialized field focused on the health, safety, and performance of aircrew and passengers
In 1934, he was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by King George V.
It was a rare honour.
Prior to 1917, Canadians of note were knighted but that ended with the Nickel Resolution, as Canada pushed towards independence.
When R.B. Bennett became Prime Minister in 1930, he briefly brought back the idea of knighthoods for Canadians, which is how we got to Sir Frederick Banting and Dame Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Three years later Frederick married a second time.
This time he wed Henrietta Ball, a gifted doctor in 1937.
She had attended the University of Toronto’s Banting Institute and earned a master’s in medical research the same year they got married.
When the Second World War erupted the following year, Frederick focused on pilots’ blacking out because of high-G forces.
He worked with Wilber Franks to develop a G-suit to help pilots remain conscious and all flight suits used today are based on the original prototypes developed by Banting and Franks.
Grant said many departments sought his advice because of his experience in innovation.
GRANT CLIP [29:13 – 29:38] 25 seconds
And he was pressured by duty so much that he was on 22 research committees for the Allied war effort early in the war and was chairman of two.
In February 1941, Frederick was asked to help coordinate military research for the Allies.
He was to travel to England, so he made his way to Gander, Newfoundland, where he boarded a Lockheed L-14 Super Electra Plane.
The flight would be departing on Feb. 20, 1941, and that morning Frederick sat waiting for take off.
He felt the engines vibrate as the plane taxied down the runway and picked up speed.
The wheels bounced a few times before the plane was airborne.
Frederick sat back in preparation for the long transatlantic journey ahead.
It would be cut tragically short… because shortly after takeoff the engines started to sputter.
Early reports suggested the right engine failed possibly due to mechanical malfunction or fuel system issues.
Then the comforting drone of it stopped as the plane lost power and it couldn’t maintain altitude.
The crew attempted to turn back toward Gander, but the aircraft couldn’t sustain flight on one engine.
The Lockheed crashed into a snow-covered, wooded area not far from the airfield.
The impact was severe.
The plane broke apart and thankfully there was no fire, which is one reason anyone survived at all.
Most of the crew were either killed instantly including the navigator and co-pilot.
The rest were injured including Captain Joseph Mackey who had a deep wound across his forehead.
Frederick had been seated in the rear section on the plane, and he also survived but with catastrophic injuries.
Rescue crews were dispatched immediately but struggled to get to the remote crash which was 16 kilometres south of Musgrave Harbour.
Meanwhile, Frederick’s condition deteriorated quickly.
With no immediate rescue and limited ability to treat his injuries in the wilderness, he died several hours after the crash and by the time help arrived, he was gone.
The man who revolutionized medical care and saved millions of lives died Feb. 21, 1941d practically alone next to the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
When the world learned of his passing the loss was felt deeply by those who knew him best… including
Charles Best who said,
“He was indeed a wonderful man, and I’ve never admired him more than during the past few months, with all the risks he took.”
Two weeks later on March 4, 1941, Frederick Banting was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto with full military honours.
At the time of his death, his widow Henrietta was serving with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps.
When the war ended, she earned her medical degree and established her own private practice.
She served as the Director of Women’s College Hospital Cancer Detection Clinic from 1958 to 1971 where she conducted groundbreaking research into the effectiveness of mammograms in diagnosing breast cancer.
Her efforts however never overshadowed what Frederick Banting was able to accomplish in life.
She was on hand to christen the SS Frederick Banting on Dec 20, 1943.
The 152-metre-long ship cost the US $2 million and when it set sail Lady Henrietta Banting and Frederick’s former assistant, Charles Best were there.
It was the first time the United States named a ship for a non-American and they did it to honour Frederick’s service to humanity. And it was one of many honours.
Ontario and British Columbia have four schools that bear his name, there are also countless streets.
Then there’s the Major Sir Frederick Banting Award for Military Health Research which is awarded every year by the surgeon general to a researcher whose work is deemed to contribute to military health.
In 2004, Canadians voted Frederick as the 4th Greatest Canadian in history, behind only Tommy Douglas, Terry Fox and Pierre Trudeau.
His name has even reached outer space.
On the near side of the moon, between where Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 landed, there is a five-kilometre-wide crater.
It is named Banting Crater.
His son, William Banting said,
“I’m delighted my family’s name is now on the moon. It gives you a bit of a weird feeling.”
Grant said the accolades are well warranted without Frederick the world would be a much different place.
GRANT CLIP [33:18 – 33:31] 13 seconds
All of this wouldn’t have happened had it not been for one sleepless night inside a modest home in London Ontario.
Frederick Banting only lived at 442 Adelaide Street North for 10 months.
In 1981, it was purchased by the London and District Branch of the Canadian Diabetes Association and was restored.
It became a museum three years later and now it isa National Historic Site.
Inside the home visitors can find Frederick’s belongings including his desk and the bed he was trying to sleep on when he had his epiphany.
It is known as the Birthplace of Insulin and Grant says it is where many with diabetes come to pay their respects.
GRANT CLIP [34:31 – 34:45] 13 seconds
Outside the home is the Flame of Hope.
It was lit by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1989 and is meant to stay lit until a cure for diabetes is found.
When that day comes, the flame will be put out by whoever makes the groundbreaking discovery.
And inside the monument is a time capsule, buried in 1991, that will be exhumed when that moment comes.
Who knows, maybe someone out there is listening and working on it… and I hope for all of humanity that you to have your own epiphany.
