In 1920, Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting visited the University of Toronto to speak to the newly appointed head of the department of physiology, John J.R. Macleod. Macleod had studied glucose metabolism and diabetes, and Banting had a new idea on how to find not only the cause but a treatment for the so-called “sugar disease.” Late in the nineteenth century, scientists had realized there was a connection between the pancreas and diabetes. The connection was further narrowed down to the islets of Langerhans, a part of the pancreas. From 1910 to 1920, Oscar Minkowski and others tried unsuccessfully to find and extract the active ingredient from the islets of Langerhans. While…

Accidental Discoveries by Lexi Krock PBS NOVA Accidents in medicine: The idea sends chills down your spine as you conjure up thoughts of misdiagnoses, mistakenly prescribed drugs, and wrongly amputated limbs. Yet while accidents in the examining room or on the operating table can be regrettable, even tragic, those that occur in the laboratory can sometimes lead to spectacular advances, life-saving treatments, and Nobel Prizes. A seemingly insignificant finding by one researcher leads to a breakthrough discovery by another; a physician methodically pursuing the answer to a medical conundrum over many years suddenly has a “Eureka” moment; a scientist who chooses to study a contaminant in his culture rather than…

Observations Upon the Origin of the Malignant Bilious, or Yellow Fever in Philadelphia. From the holdings of Center for the History of Medicine/Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine—Harvard Medical School. Yellow fever is known for bringing on a characteristic yellow tinge to the eyes and skin, and for the terrible “black vomit” caused by bleeding into the stomach. Known today to be spread by infected mosquitoes, yellow fever was long believed to be a miasmatic disease originating in rotting vegetable matter and other putrefying filth, and most believed the fever to be contagious. The first major American yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in July 1793 and peaked during the first…

Poincaré, Émile Léon. Prophylaxie et géographie médicale :des principales maladies tributaires de l’hygiène. From the holdings of Center for the History of Medicine/Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine—Harvard Medical School. Tuberculosis, also known as “consumption,” “phthisis,” or the “white plague,” was the cause of more deaths in industrialized countries than any other disease during the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the late 19th century, 70 to 90% of the urban populations of Europe and North America were infected with the TB bacillus, and about 80% of those individuals who developed active tuberculosis died of it. Causes of Tuberculosis For most of the 19th century, tuberculosis was thought to be…

The Mosquito: Its Relation to Disease and Its Extermination. From the holdings of Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine—Harvard Medical School. The Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty of 1903 created the Panama Canal Zone and allowed the US government to begin building its 51–mile waterway through the Isthmus of Panama in May 1904. The transoceanic waterway opened in 1914, approximately four centuries after Charles I, King of Spain, conceived of a waterway across the Isthmus to facilitate Spain’s colonial interests in the New World. In constructing the Panama Canal, American planners and builders faced challenges that went far beyond politics and engineering. The deadly endemic diseases of yellow fever and malaria were dangerous…