Celebrating a Century of Health
Innovation at the University of Toronto
Our revolutionary discovery of insulin has saved millions of lives.
It also sparked a culture of ingenuity and collaboration that continues to change the world.
Insulin 100
Celebrating a Century of Health
Innovation at the University of Toronto
Our revolutionary discovery of insulin has saved millions of lives.
It also sparked a culture of ingenuity and collaboration that continues to change the world.
A Life Saving Discovery is Born
Five-year-old Teddy Ryder was among the first patients to receive the “pancreatic extract” co-discovered by Frederick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921. He would go on to live 71 more years with diabetes, one of millions of lives saved and made better by insulin.
Left to right: Teddy Ryder on the day he was given his first insulin injection. Early press coverage of insulin’s discovery.
When news of insulin’s discovery broke in the spring of 1922, Teddy’s weight had dropped to just 26 pounds. He’d lost interest in playing and was unable to take more than a few steps on his own.
Writing to Frederick Banting, Teddy’s uncle—a doctor at New York’s Bellevue Hospital—stressed his nephew’s perilous condition: “It looks to me as though a very few months … will be all he can hold out … I need not tell you how earnestly I hope you will see your way clear to treat him.”
Banting did see his way to treating Teddy. Travelling to Toronto by train with his mother, the little boy received his first dose of insulin on July 10, 1922. By the fall Teddy was strong enough to return home to his family and a new life in New Jersey. “I wish you could come to see me,” the now robust six-year-old wrote to Banting the following year. “I am a fat boy now and I feel fine. I can climb a tree.”
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