Zitat des Tages von Frederick Banting:
I had been taught that if I cried, to be quiet about it, so whereas I never howled, the least thing made me cry both at school and at home. Crying tends to separate a child from other children, for even children dislike a cry baby, and I had no friends in the world.
Henderson had a thousand times more to do with the discovery of insulin than had Macleod. In the first place, he knew more about it. In the second place, he was consulted before every series of experiments, and he advised, criticized, or commended.
Best and I worked in the sub-basement of the old medical building day and night. Time, meals, sleep - all were of secondary consideration. We had to get insulin into a form that was refined enough for continued clinical use.
The method of estimating the potency of insulin solutions is based on the effect that insulin produces upon the blood sugar of normal animals.
On February 19th, Dr. Collip found that he was unable to refine the extract by his method and was unable to keep up his supply to the wards. During the following six weeks, or longer, no extract was available for clinical tests. I believe the reason for this to be that Collip, wishing to keep his process a secret, had not kept careful records.
When I go in, I find that it is not a lab but an office. There are a pile of letters to answer, phone numbers to call up, people waiting to have an interview, routine work that must be done.
I lived in constant terror of being asked a question in class. Even if I knew the answer, I was never able to tell it before the class.
If a patient became sugar-free and blood sugar normal on a basal requirement diet, the caloric intake was gradually increased until sugar appeared in the urine. The tolerance was thus ascertained.
Professor Macleod, in his remarks, gave everything that I was going to say and used the pronoun 'we' throughout. The following day, students were talking about the remarkable work of Professor Macleod.
The place where we were operating was not fit to be called an operating room. Aseptic work had not been done in it for some years. The floor could not be scrubbed properly, or the water would go through on the laboratories below.
