0:00 Before January 1922, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.0:05 Full stop.0:06 It's another one of those stories, like we saw with Darwin and Wallace last week, where a world-changing idea is born from obsession, desperation, and a whole lot of rivalry.0:19 A death sentence is...0:21 that's not an exaggeration, is it?0:23 Like, there was literally nothing they could do.0:27 Nothing.0:27 The only "treatment" was a starvation diet that might buy you a few more agonizing months.0:34 Your body couldn't process sugar, so you just wasted away.0:38 That was the world in 1920 when a young Canadian surgeon named Frederick Banting had an idea.0:45 Okay, so what was the big idea?0:48 What did he see that no one else had?0:51 He read an article late one night, and it sparked something.0:55 He theorized that if you could stop the pancreas from producing its digestive juices, you could isolate the other thing it made—the mysterious substance that regulated blood sugar.1:09 His plan was, uh, pretty gruesome.1:11 I feel like they always are in this era of medicine.1:15 Right?1:16 He proposed tying off the pancreatic ducts of dogs, letting the digestive parts of the organ wither and die, and then grinding up what was left to get this substance.1:28 He took the idea to a prominent professor, J.J.R.1:32 Macleod, who was...1:33 skeptical.1:34 I mean, it sounds a little unhinged.1:37 "Let me torture some dogs in your lab based on a hunch I got at 2 a.m." Exactly.1:43 But Macleod gave him a tiny lab, ten dogs, and a summer student named Charles Best to help him.1:50 That was it.1:51 In May 1921, Banting and Best got to work.1:54 So you have the ambitious but unproven doctor and his summer intern, working in a back room.2:01 This feels like a familiar setup.2:03 A classic setup.2:05 And it was brutal, messy work.2:07 They were basically making this pancreatic sludge.2:11 They’d inject it into diabetic dogs, and...2:14 it sort of worked.2:15 It lowered blood sugar.2:17 But the extract was so impure, so full of toxins, that it caused terrible side effects.2:23 So they proved the concept, but the "cure" was almost as bad as the disease.2:29 Precisely.2:30 And this is where the egos come in.2:33 Macleod, seeing a glimmer of potential, brings in a professional biochemist, James Collip, to actually purify the extract.2:42 Oh, I can see where this is going.2:44 Banting and Best must have LOVED that.2:47 Oh, they were thrilled.2:49 They felt Collip was an intruder, trying to steal their discovery.2:54 The lab became this hotbed of resentment and secrecy.2:58 But they were running out of time.3:00 They found a patient: a 14-year-old boy named Leonard Thompson, who was in a Toronto hospital, literally wasting away.3:09 He weighed 65 pounds.3:11 Wow.3:11 On January 11, 1922, they injected him with Banting and Best's crude extract.3:17 And it was a failure.3:19 His blood sugar dropped a bit, but he developed a huge, painful abscess at the injection site.3:26 The stuff was just too toxic.3:28 God, so close.3:29 To have the right idea and have it fail on a technicality.3:33 That must have been devastating.3:36 It was almost the end.3:37 But this is where Collip, the biochemist they resented, becomes the hero.3:43 He locks himself away for twelve straight days, refining his purification method.3:49 On January 23rd, they go back to Leonard Thompson's bedside.3:53 They give him a second shot.3:56 And...3:56 It worked.3:57 Perfectly.3:58 No abscess, no fever.3:59 His blood sugar dropped to normal levels.4:02 His ketones vanished.4:04 For the first time in history, a person with Type 1 diabetes was not going to die.4:10 That's...4:11 incredible.4:11 Just like that.4:13 The whole world changes in a hospital room in Toronto.4:17 In an instant.4:18 But the drama wasn't over.4:20 The 1923 Nobel Prize was awarded to Banting and Macleod.4:24 Wait.4:24 NOT Best?4:25 The guy who was there from day one?4:28 And not Collip, the man whose purification actually made it WORK?4:32 Nope.4:33 Banting was so furious he almost refused the prize.4:37 He immediately announced he was splitting his prize money with Best.4:42 Then Macleod, feeling the heat, announced he was splitting his money with Collip.4:48 So it's a miracle born from, what, pure ego and professional jealousy?4:53 It’s just so messy.4:55 The messiest.4:56 They all fought over the credit for decades.4:59 But the truth is, the discovery needed all of them.5:03 It needed Banting's obsessive idea, Best's tireless lab work, Macleod's resources, and—critically—Collip's biochemical genius.5:12 It's a perfect reminder that a breakthrough isn't a single flash of light.5:18 It's a chain of them, often forged by people who can't even stand to be in the same room.
