Banting, Sir Frederick Grant

  • DCB profile notes:
    • Physician, surgeon, army officer, medical researcher, Nobel laureate, and artist; b. 14 Nov. 1891 in Essa Township, Simcoe County, Ont., son of William Thompson Banting and Margaret Grant; m. first 4 June 1924 Marion Wilson Robertson in Toronto, and they had a son; they divorced 2 Dec. 1932; m. secondly there 2 June 1939 Henrietta Elizabeth Ball; they had no children; d. 21 Feb. 1941 near Musgrave Harbour, Nfld.
    • Fred Banting was a child of agricultural Ontario, the youngest of six born on the family farm near Alliston, northwest of Toronto.
    • Banting began his medical course in 1912. He received slightly higher-than-average grades, but otherwise did not stand out. The five-year program in medicine was radically condensed during World War I. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in December 1916. By his own account, Banting had not been particularly well trained. He had developed an interest in surgery, enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and upon graduation began full-time military service. He worked as a surgeon in a Canadian hospital in England for 13 months, was sent to France in June 1918, and as a battalion medical officer, served on the front lines during fierce fighting that summer and autumn. In the attack on Cambrai on 28 September Captain Banting was hit in his right arm by shrapnel and evacuated. He was awarded the Military Cross for his conduct during the action. After several weeks’ anxiety about the condition of his wound, Banting was able to resume duties in England, before being recalled to Canada in 1919.
    • Staff at Western, who lacked both expertise and facilities, advised Banting to discuss his idea with the professor of physiology at the University of Toronto, John James Rickard Macleod, an internationally recognized expert in carbohydrate metabolism. At a meeting in Toronto on 8 November, Macleod told Banting, who had little knowledge of either diabetes or the pancreas, that his idea could be worth pursuing, but might well lead to the same negative results that had bedevilled many more-experienced researchers. If Banting still wanted to try, Macleod would make facilities and animals available to him.
    • Banting believed that he was the discoverer of insulin, first as the man whose idea led to the discovery, secondly as the conductor of the animal experiments which he believed had proved the presence of the substance. His claim was highly vulnerable, however, because of inadequate controls and inconsistent results in his research, the failure of his extract in the first Thompson trial, and the inconclusive result of a longevity experiment on one of the dogs (whose pancreas Banting had failed to remove completely). At the time there was a prima facie case that Collip’s work had made the great leap forward in Toronto. Later analysis has supported this view, exposing numerous factual and interpretive errors in Banting and Best’s first paper, Banting’s mistaken assumptions about the physiological consequences of duct ligation and pancreatic degeneration, and the possibility that faulty technique made their experiments almost meaningless. As well, Macleod had given Banting more advice than the latter acknowledged. As early as December 1922 the British Medical Journal (London) published a devastating critique of Banting and Best’s research, which concluded that “the production of insulin originated in a wrongly conceived, wrongly conducted, and wrongly interpreted series of experiments.”
    • Banting, who had risked his career, his livelihood, his reputation, and perhaps the possibility of marital happiness on the research, had nearly broken down in the early months of 1922. He seldom appeared in the lab and, by his own account, used alcohol, sometimes stolen from the lab, to get to sleep. Friends thought he might be suicidal. He returned to work, however, at Best’s urging after Collip found that he had lost the ability to produce effective insulin, a not-uncommon problem in pioneering biochemical extraction. A desperate struggle by the team in the spring to rediscover the technique resulted in Banting and Best recovering an element of leadership: Banting suddenly found himself with the major supply of usable insulin – apparently made by Best – and both his morale and his determination revived. He felt deeply indebted to Best for having come to his aid when he most needed it, and he launched into private practice in Toronto as the clinician who could treat diabetes and was also permitted to care for diabetic patients at the Christie Street military hospital.
    • By the end of 1922 it was clear that insulin’s impact in the treatment of diabetes was dazzling, and the discovery was almost universally hailed as a triumph of modern medicine. With important help from politically astute friends and admirers such as his former teacher Dr George William Ross, Banting quickly developed a reputation as the key man in the insulin story, a rough-hewn Canadian genius who had taken his idea to wonderful success under the most difficult conditions, with some assistance from Best. An organized campaign to honour Banting led to the government of Ontario in 1923 appointing him to a Banting and Best chair of medical research at the University of Toronto, the first purely research professorship at a Canadian university. Parliament granted him an annuity “sufficient to permit Dr. Banting to devote his life to medical research.” And in the autumn of 1923 it was announced that Banting and J. J. R. Macleod would share that year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin. It was the fastest honouring of a discovery in the history of the Nobel prizes; Banting, at the age of 31, was the youngest laureate and the first Canadian. For the rest of his life he would head lists of prominent Canadians, and he would be showered with honorary degrees, prizes, and fellowships.
    • He left Gander, Nfld, on a two-engine Hudson with a crew of three during the night of 20 Feb. 1941. Shortly after take-off the pilot reported that an engine had failed and he was turning back. When the second engine failed, the plane crash-landed by a pond near Musgrave Harbour, on the east coast of Newfoundland. Two of the crew were killed instantly. The pilot survived. Banting was mortally injured and died before outside help arrived.
    • Major Sir Frederick Banting’s body was returned to Toronto, where he was given a hero’s and a warrior’s funeral. There is no truth in propaganda stories that he had been on a secret mission to Britain of the highest importance, or in persistent rumours that his plane had somehow been sabotaged by Nazi agents. He left a modest estate to his widow and the son of his first marriage.
    • Over the years Banting’s fame remained undiminished, as the myth persisted that insulin had been discovered through the genius of Banting and Best, working without significant help. In fact he had been the curious and lucky doctor who had started a ball rolling, had stayed with it through the mobilization of expert help in an excellent facility, and then had spent the rest of his life coping with the consequences of having achieved a scientist’s fondest dream – saving lives, winning the Nobel Prize, becoming an immortal.
  • Second Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=6069
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/110570252/charles_william-banting