"Fred trained to become a surgeon.
That's a doctor who can perform
operations. Fred trained at the Hospital
for Sick Children in Toronto.
There Fred saw many children who were
sick or dying. He wanted so badly to help
them, especially the kids who had diabetes
like his friend Jennie."
The book opens on the day that Dr. Fred Banting was about to inject his first patient with the newest form of insulin. He had been working for months, with one aim in mind: to find a cure for diabetes, a disease that had killed his friend when both were very young. Fred was determined to make a difference for people all over the world who were living with diabetes. Could he save this scared little girl? It was his fervent hope.
Ms. MacLeod then looks back at Fred's early life on an Ontario farm. Much younger than his siblings, Fred turned to caring for the animals and learning to observe and diagnose problems that arose with them. His father provided constant support and encouragement. Fred's school friend, Jennie, loved animals just as he did. They spent a lot of time together. Jennie's health began to fail, and soon she was not able to attend school or play with Fred. Jennie had diabetes. It broke Fred's heart when she died.
After school, Fred headed to university without really knowing what he wanted to study. In his second year, he chose medicine. After graduation, Fred travelled to Britain to care for WWI soldiers who had been wounded in action. While there, Fred's arm was shattered by a bomb and he came close to losing it. Luckily, he was able to care for himself. After the war, he returned to Canada where he began teaching. It was the beginning of his education about diabetes and its causes.
Biochemist John Macleod, a professor at the U of T, offered Fred a lab and an assistant to do the serious work of finding a way to help the many people with diabetes. They worked diligently to develop the insulin that they believed to the be the answer. It worked on a young teen named Leonard Thompson, and the rest is part of our history. For the rest of his life, Fred worked to make the world a better place, and he also spent time painting with his friend A.Y. Jackson. A plane crash near Gander, Newfoundland took his life in 1941; his legacy lives on in the millions of people who have benefitted from his hard work.
A timeline of his life and archival photos bring the book to an end.
Elizabeth MacLeod and Mike Deas have done a remarkable job of bringing important Canadians to the forefront in their series called Scholastic Canada Biography. This is the 14th book in this exemplary series.
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