Medicine: Well Won

Banting got it. The 1923 Nobel medicine award went to the 31-year-old discoverer of insulin, as forecast in TIME (Aug. 27). It will be equally shared by his superior in the physiology department of the University of Toronto, Dr. J. J. R. MacLeod, whose advice and cooperation speeded Dr. Banting’s triumph. Dr. Banting announced that he would share his part of the award with Dr. C. F. Best, 23 years old, a fellow-graduate at Toronto, and co-worker in the insulin researches.

The young Canadian has now gained practically all the scientific and financial honors possible. He will have a life income of at least $15,000, besides other fat perquisites, enabling him to devote all his time to productive medical research. It is no disparagement to Dr. Banting’s admitted genius and modesty to say that scores of other comparatively little known scientists, who may not have made so spectacular a ten-strike but have produced a constant stream of valuable research, deserve equal recognition and reward.

Information is trickling out from the Connaught Laboratory on the nature of Dr. Banting’s new secret (TIME, Oct. 22). The experiments are said to deal with the suprarenal glands. These ” endocrines ” affect the general vitality of the body, emotions of combat and effort, blood pressure, pigmentation, sex development. They have a ” cortex ” or rind, the active principle of which has not yet been isolated, and a ” medulla ” or core, source of adrenalin (TIME, April 4). Failure or insufficiency of suprarenal action causes various disorders, depression, neurasthenia, discolored skin and the so-called Addison’s disease. The exact objective of Dr. Banting’s new research is not known. He plaintively protests: ” The greatest service people could render me would be to leave me alone to my work.”