17th May, 1921 

 

Two other scientists and I will be co-working to greater understand the Pancreas and diabetes. I shall be working alongside with the two extremely competent scientists; Charles H Best and JJR Macleod to try to achieve this great feat. Our main goal will be to discover a way to treat diabetes and also find how to isolate that substance from the pancreas as we believe that failure in this organ causes diabetes. We shall begin the test on dogs and once we have discovered the secret, we will start to test on real humans who were diagnosed with diabetes that have been lucky enough to have the first ever treatment of diabetes. But, my team and I have only just started to begin to look into the pancreas today and properly treating humans is far in the future. I shall continue to update this diary on the latest developments. 

 

 

10th November, 1921 

 

Finally we have made a break-through! This morning we made our first successful test on a dog. While monitoring its blood sugar levels we found that they dropped dramatically soon after we gave it the extract from the pancreas. We are currently keeping the dog with diabetes alive with the extract and hope to keep doing so. It has been a long and hard 6 months, with constant failed attempts, we probably have gone through hundreds of failed ideas and attempts with the 3 of us combined. But each of us knew that it wasn't going to be easy, that we were part of something for the world to rejoice about and for many hundreds of people, we were to save their lives as they had diabetes. 

 

The substance doesn't look clean but it still works and that's the main thing. But despite this breakthrough in information, we still have lots of work in front of us. First we still have to find a more reliable and easier way to extract the substance. This is because at the moment our developed insulin will probably cost a fortune and will only be available to very few people as we won't have a large supply. And we will probably try to find a more concentrated and stronger version of the insulin to improve results and so less of the substance is used. 

 

12th December 1921 

 

We have decided to add a new member to our small group of scientists in hopes of bringing new ideas into the light as the three of us are almost out of ideas. The new experienced scientist's name is James Collip and he is an extremely competent Biochemist. It has been a while since the last major breakthrough, we have had a few smaller realizations but nothing major in a while. We hope that adding Collip to the team will further purify the fairly new insulin substance.  

 

23rd January 1922 

The insulin has finally been injected into a human successfully with no seeable side-affects! This is a day to remember! We gave a 14 year old child; Leonard, the dose a while back, his blood sugars dropped, but there were some major side-affects. But after a few more weeks of purifying it further, we re-introduced the substance to Leonard and his B.G.L. (blood glucose levels) dropped substantially with no foreseeable side-affects.  

 

This means that all those with diabetes, no longer have a death sentence for nothing. We have a way to treat it. But don't misunderstand this as a cure, no. This is simply a way to treat the condition. Once companies start to mass-produce this insulin, there should be no more diabetics with a death sentence for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Our many months of toil have lead up to this, sure, some may have doubted for a bit, but the outcome felt just as good as we thought it would be.