Nobel Prizeman

That Dr. Frederick Grant Banting, discoverer of-- insulin,* will receive the next award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine seems logical from a survey of the scientific achievements of the past year. It has been suggested from several sources, and from the Edinburgh International Congress of Physiology comes the story that Dr. Banting will be recommended to the Swedish Academy of Medicine, which acts as the jury for this prize on behalf of the Nobel Foundation, custodians of the fund established in 1896 by the will of Alfred B. Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite. The average value of the prize is about $40,000.

But Dr. Steinach (Austrian gland man) has also been mentioned, and outstanding achievement is notoriously no guarantee of jury actions, as witness the fact that Thomas Hardy, generally conceded the greatest living English man of letters, has yet to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, not to mention Conrad, Shaw, Galsworthy, Barrie, Bennett, Wells, while second-rate Spittelers, Heyses and unknown Scandinavians are deified. Nevertheless, should he receive the medicine prize, Dr. Banting will be in distinguished company. It has been awarded 16 times since the year 1901. In 1906 and 1908 it was divided between two men, so that 18 medical scientists in all have been honored, no prize having been awarded in several recent years. The following nationalities have been represented among the prizewinners: Germany 4, France 2, Russia 2, Denmark 2, England 1, U. S. 1, Austria 1, Spain 1, Italy 1, Belgium 1, Switzerland 1, Sweden 1. The list:

1901. Emil Adolf von Behring (1854-), German, director of the Hygienic Institute, Marburg, discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin, authority on bovine tuberculosis.

1902. Sir Ronald Ross (1857-), English, Colonel in British Army, expert in tropical medicine, discoverer of transmission of the malaria parasite by the Anopheles mosquito (1898).

1903. Niels Ryberg Finsen (1860-1904), Danish physician, inventor of the Finsen lamp for treating diseases with decolorized light rays.

1904. Ivan Petrovitch Pavloff (1848-), Russian physiologist, student of the 'digestive system (TIME, July 23).

1905. Robert Koch (1843-1910), German, director of the Berlin Hygienic Institute, isolator of the tubercle bacillus (1882) and discoverer of tuberculin.

1906. 1) Camillo Golgi (1844-), Italian neurologist, discoverer of method of nerve connection, distinguisher between varieties of malaria parasite.

2) Santiago Ramony Cajal (1852-), Spanish, professor of histology, University of Madrid, authority on structure of brain and nerves.

1907. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922), French military surgeon, discoverer of Plasmodium vivax, germ of tertian malaria.

1908. 1) Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), German, director of the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapeutics, Frankfort, discoverer of salvarsan and neosalvarsan, antisyphilitic compounds.

2) Elie Metchnikoff (1845-1916), Russian, sub-director of Pasteur Institute, Paris, inventor of " phagocytosis "theory of white blood corpuscles, discoverer of therapeutic value of lactic ferments (Bacillus bulgaricus).

1909. Emil Theodor Kocher (1841-1917), Swiss, director of surgical clinic, University of Berne, expert in surgery of thyroid and other ductless glands and of exophthalmic goiter.

1910. Albrecht Kossel (1853-), German, professor of physiology at Heidelberg, distinguished for research in chemical composition of cells and nuclei.

1911. Allvar Gullstrand (1862-), Swedish, professor of optics, University of Upsala, expert in ophthalmology.

1912. Alexis Carrel (1873-), American, member Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, discoverer of methods of suturing blood vessels and transplanting human organs, co-discoverer of Carrel-Dakin solution.

1913. Charles Robert Richet (1850-), French, professor of physiology, University of Paris, authority on anaphylaxis and serum therapy.

1914. Robert Barany (1876-), Austrian otologist, now professor at Upsala, Sweden, specialist in neurology of the inner ear.

1915-1918. Not awarded.

1919. Jules Bordet (1870-), Belgian, director Pasteur Institute, Brussels, toxicologist and serologist.

1920. August Krogh (1874-). Dane, professor of zoo-physiology, University of Copenhagen, student of respiratory exchange of animals and man.

1921-1922. Not awarded.

Dr. Banting has already been granted an annuity of $7,500 by the Canadian Government (TiME, July 9) ; the province of Ontario has appropriated $10,000 a year to found a department of research at Toronto, headed by Banting; during the present year he has done little else but attend, by special request, the leading medical and surgical meetings of America and Great Britain, receiving enthusiastic ovations at every turn. Many an older man might be forgiven if such adulation went to his head, but not so Banting, who remains the same modest young seeker after truth.

He is 31 years old, the son of a farmer living at Alliston, Ont. He worked on his father's homestead until he was 19, when he entered the University of Toronto. Graduating from medical school, he entered the Canadian Army, became a battalion surgeon with the rank of captain. Wounded at Cambrai, invalided to England, he returned to Canada in 1920 and became a laboratory assistant at the Western University, London, Ont., where by chance he soon became interested in the internal secretions of the pancreas from the so-called " islands of Langerhans " (TiME, April 21), and began experimenting with methods of extracting the secretion. He secured a leave of absence and set up a laboratory in the home of a medical friend in Toronto. The experiments were then so promising that he resigned his position and shortly succeeded in securing a fairly pure extract by tying off the ducts of the pancreas so that the rest of the the gland atrophied and the pancreatic juice (the external secretion) was eliminated. His work then attracted attention at the University of Toronto, and he was offered the use of the Connaught Laboratories there. He was assisted by C. H. Best, another young laboratory man, by Dr. J. B. Collip, of the University of Alberta, who has since discovered " gluckokinin," an insulin substitute derived from green vegetables (TIME, June 4), and he especially profited by the friendly oversight and advice of Dr. J. J. R. McLeod, professor of physiology, who has also been mentioned for the Nobel Prize. To Dr. Banting, however, must always be given the lion's share of the credit for the idea and its development. In May, 1922, the work had proceeded far enough to be offered to the medical profession for testing. Tests, conducted by a special committee in several hospitals, have since proved the value of the specific, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., has given $150,000 to 13 hospitals to introduce it (TIME, July 2).

Recent events in the progress of insulin:

1) Banting, Best, Scott have found insulin in other tissues than the pancreas, e. g., the liver, spleen, thymus, thyroid and submaxillary glands and even muscle tissue. In fact, some of these produced a greater quantity than the pancreas. When tested on rabbits and dogs, it has had the same results in lowering blood sugar.

2) Dr. William Thalheimer, of Milwaukee, has used insulin successfully in various types of acidosis other than diabetes, following serious operations.

3) Insulin has proved a valuable adjunct in the treatment of cases of malnutrition in children, according to Dr. Robert L. Pitfield, of Germantown, Pa.

4) U. S. Public Health Service and Bureau of Fisheries investigators, seeking to extract insulin from the pancreatic glands of sharks and other fish, have so far been unsuccessful. The chief source of supply is still beef pancreas.

*Insulin (for the cure of diabetes) is used hypodermically. It was originally discovered in the pancreas glands (situated at the bottom of the stomach near the vertebrae) of certain animals. (TIME, April 21, June 4.)