January 22nd, 1968 – As written by Helen Banting Jackson, his Niece.
Fred Banting was born on a farm just outside of the town of Alliston, on November 14th, 1891. His parents were William Thompson Banting, and the former Margaret Grant, who was the first non-native baby girl born in Alliston. He was the youngest of a family of which my father, also William Thompson (Jr.), was the second oldest, but for some reason, he and my father, who went by Thompson, stuck together more than those who were nearer each other in age. They even shared a room, though I don’t suppose that was necessary, as there were seven bedrooms in the old, enlarged farmhouse.
He and my father, William Thompson like his father, were both fond of the farm, and took a greater interest in it than the others, but he was more studious than my father and probed deeper into any question that bothered him. Any time he couldn’t be outside, he would be found with his head in a book. It was not often a school book though. He was never considered a good student and had to work extra hard to get through school.
My grandparents used to read aloud to each other at night, and as his room was above theirs, and only heated through a hole in the floor under the bed, he used to lie there and listen with rapt attention, to any book they happened to be reading.
He was quite active in sports at school, and at one time wanted to be a long-distance runner, like the Indian Tom Longboat who was his idol at this time. He would get up early and jog up and down the road, before walking the two miles and three blocks to school. Sometimes he would ride bareback to school, and when he got there he would give the horse a slap and send it home again. For a while, he wanted to be a powerful swimmer, and practiced in Boyne River, just down the road from the farm. He saved a friend from drowning, during this stage.
He and his cousin Fred Hipwell, who also became a doctor, used to spend hours digging on an island in this same river, thinking they might find some pirates gold. We don’t know of a spot on the whole island that they hadn’t dug up at one time or another. Not long before his death, my brothers went with him, just to have a look at the island again. He was actually working on a plan with my father, Thompson, to buy the property south of the farm as his retirement days home. But that ended with his sudden death.
I’m telling you these things to show that no matter what his interest was, he went ahead enthusiastically, and didn’t give up till the job was completed. He always said it was just luck that he happened to reach the goal, but all his friends knew that it was plain hard work, and his ability to think things through.
Any time he came home in the summertime, he would gather us together to go out hunting for four-leafed clovers. He usually got as many as all the rest of us put together. It was strange the way that he would say, “There should be quite a few over there”, pointing to a spot a good many yards away, and sure enough, he’d pick them out almost as fast as he could pick a bouquet of flowers.
He once saw the scaffolding of a building collapse. Two men were quite badly hurt, and he was the one who ran for the doctor. He watched the doctor as he examined the injuries, and bound up broken bones, and it was from that day that he said he would like to be a doctor.
What started him thinking about diabetes was probably something that happened this same year. He sometimes walked to school and back with a girl who was a classmate. She took sick and was unable to go to school, but for a while sat on their veranda where he would stop by to chat about the day’s’ happenings. It wasn’t too long until he was a pallbearer at her funeral. Over and over he would say, “Why did Jane (Jennie Victoria Jorden) have to die? Isn’t there anything they can do for diabetes?”
When he graduated from High School, he still wanted to be a doctor, but his parents, who were very religious, had always wanted one of the family to be a Minister. He hated to disappoint them, so he suggested a compromise. He was quite willing to become a Medical Missionary, and with that in mind, he started university.
During his second year, he suddenly got fed up and decided that in spite of his parents’ wishes, he only wanted medicine. So he gave up at Easter and went home to help his father on the farm until fall. Then he enrolled in what was known as Meds 1T7 but became better known on the rugby field than as a student. But in experiments, he excelled and spent as much time in the lab as he could. He bought a microscope on his own and would spend hours pricking his fingers just to see the ever-changing life that goes on in a drop of blood. Or he would let his whole lunch hour go unheeded to try to find out why a certain solution would do a certain thing. He just had to find out things, and I guess it was that trait in his character that led him to the discovery of Insulin.
At University he became interested in deformities and decided he would specialize in orthopaedic surgery, and he helped a great many children during his time.
At the beginning of this third year at Medical School, World War broke out, so in the summer of 1915, he volunteered as a Private, along with the whole class. The University authorities were aghast at losing one whole class at once, so made quick plans to shorten the course, and managed to persuade them that it was their patriotic duty to finish the course first, then enlist. To do this, they carried on their course all through the summer holidays, so that the class of seventeen actually finished in December of 1916.
All of the physical fit new doctors enlisted at once and went overseas, and Fred was assigned to an Orthopedic Hospital in England, where wounded soldiers were sent directly from the battlefield. He wanted to be in the thick of things, though, so he went to France with the 13th Battalion Field Ambulance and was transferred to the 44th Battalion, where he almost immediately was cited for bravery and endurance. Wherever there was a chance to save a life, he was there, and it seemed that he never rested. He was slightly wounded several times, but it wasn’t till six weeks before the end of the war that he had to stop his work because of a wound. This happened at Cambrai when he was going through intense shell fire to take the place of a wounded doctor. On the way, several men near him were hit and he stopped to attend their injuries but was himself wounded in the arm, by a piece of shrapnel. His Major ordered him to the field hospital at once, then the Major went on. Seventeen hours later when the Major returned, he still found him in the midst of battle, dressing wounds, but by this time he had to give up. For this, he was awarded the Military Cross.
It was many months before his wound was better, it having become infected. The doctors all said it would have to be amputated, but he wouldn’t hear of such a thing even when they said it was a last resort. Under his own direction, it finally improved, and he still had his arm.
While convalescing for long months in England, he decided he couldn’t be idle, so he read and studied in order to qualify for membership in the Royal College of Surgeons, and a certificate in the Royal College of Physicians. With all his reading at this time, he began to realize that other aspects of medicine could be as interesting as surgery, and he thought physiology might hold his interest. He studied what he could about the pancreas, but found out there wasn’t a great deal on the subject, except failure to understand it.
He soon got orders to return to Canada for his discharge, and on his return, he became an internee at Sick Children’s Hospital. There beside helping them a great deal, he became friends with all the children with whom he came in contact and would tell them stories and jokes and give them funny nicknames. He was especially interested in the diabetic children that he knew would never go home again.
Dr. Starr was his Supervisor at the hospital, and it was on his advice that, when his internship was over, he went to London, Ontario to establish a practice in orthopedic surgery. This was almost a disaster. He started out with practically nothing, and in the first month, he only had one patient, and that was just for a minor disorder. He talked to some of the Professors at Western, and as a result, when University started, he became a part-time lecturer.
Meanwhile, to help fill in the time during office hours, he bought paint, brushes and canvasses, and a few pictures he liked and started copying. One picture alone, he painted about a dozen times and was still not satisfied. But he didn’t give up trying.
While in London, he had a little patient who couldn’t walk in spite of braces built by a well-known company. After the mother had had the child at his office, he still worried about it and went to the child’s home to take a good look at the brace. He hunted up a blacksmith and told him what he needed, but when it wasn’t made exactly the way he wanted, he took over the anvil himself, making a brace that the foremost orthopedic surgeon said was absolutely perfect. The child walked for the first time in his life, and he kept up his contact with that family for years.
Meanwhile, he was lecturing to second-year students on physiology. The next day’s lesson was to be on the pancreas, and although he took home from the college library all he could find, he still couldn’t find much on what he wanted to know. He tried magazines, the city library, everything he could lay his hands on. Before bed, he read what other doctors had done that were not a success. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered why their experiments were not a success, and in his mind, was trying to figure out what had happened. At 2:00 a.m. he suddenly jumped out of bed and wrote in a little black notebook: “Ligate pancreatic duct of dogs. Wait six or eight weeks. Remove residue and extract”.
The idea had been born.
The next morning he explained his idea to Professor Miller, the head of the department, and asked if he could conduct some experiments there. Now, professor Macleod of the University of Toronto was the foremost authority on diabetes, and Professor Miller suggested he go to Toronto to talk over the idea. So off he went on his first free weekend so see Professor Macleod. He asked for use of the lab for eight weeks, an assistant to help him and ten dogs for the experiment. Professor Macleod explained that such experiments were unsuccessful, that he himself had made a full study of an experiment, and had written a textbook on the matter, so how could one without any training expect to prove the existence of a secretion for which the greatest physiologists had searched in vain? He advised Dr. Banting to forget all about it.
But he did not know Banting. Three more times he made the trip to Toronto with the usual request and got the same answer. But the last time, Dr. Macleod, who was going to Scotland for the whole summer, agreed that since the lab would not be in use, it could be used for the eight weeks. He also agreed to let him have ten dogs and told him there were several students who might like to work with him, one being Charles Best, who just received his B.A. and was now going on for his doctor’s degree, and another by the name of Noble. Charles Best had intended to work as a professional baseball player for the summer, but was interested in experiments, also in diabetes, as his favourite aunt had just died of the disease, so he consented to work for the first four weeks, after which Noble would take a turn. He still had two years to go before becoming a doctor.
In May 1921, Fred Banting moved back to Toronto, with all his possessions in one trunk and two suitcases in his one-seater. The first thing he had to do was to sell his car to help meet expenses, as they realized they would need more dogs. Early in July, they opened the dogs’ abdomens to see the results, only to find that nothing had happened! They had not tied the pancreas tight enough and they didn’t dry out as expected. It was a terrible blow, but they did it again tighter and used silk, and again waited. This time things went better. One dog was chloroformed and opened. They found the shrivelled remnant of the pancreas. This was removed, chopped, ground with sand, made into a solution, which they named Isletin, but was later called Insulin. Meanwhile, another dog whose pancreas they had removed, went through all the stages of diabetes until it passed into a coma. Then the insulin was injected, and in a few hours, the dog came out of the coma. This was something no diabetic dog had ever done before.
This was only the beginning.
They found they had to keep on giving the injections or the dogs would lapse back into a coma, and there wasn’t enough insulin to keep on.
This took longer than the allotted eight weeks, but experiments were encouraging, and as Professor Macleod didn’t come back till September, they kept on using the lab, still with the help of Charles Best.
When Professor Macleod did arrive back, he was very hard to convince that the experiments should be carried on with more help yet, but seeing is believing, and he at least admitted that they had something, and he began helping them, and he himself set about purifying insulin.
Dr. Gilchrist was one of Fred’s classmates, but had developed diabetes, and was still alive on a special diet, but was losing ground. He asked them if could be a guinea pig, and for seven years they did a lot of their experimenting on him. As they said, there is probably not another man alive who has had more samples of blood taken from his veins. But he is considered one of Canada’s foremost authorities.
Almost overnight, Dr. Banting became famous. He was given the Starr Gold Medal. An annuity of $7,500 by the Dominion Government. $10,000 for research.
In 1923, the Nobel Prize $40,000 for the two of them, he was expecting it to be himself and Charles Best but found it was himself and Dr. Mcleod, whom he couldn’t find the heart to be friends with under the circumstances. So he divided his share with Charles Best, then gave his share for research.
Sir William Mulock who was quite a friend, always said he had no money sense.
He spent a great deal of time in 1923 in Europe, where he spoke at many meetings, and just attended some. That was the year he opened the Exhibition in Toronto, with the fewest words anyone had ever used for such an address.
When he opened up a practice in London, everyone thought he would get married, but no plans seemed to be in the air. He had been engaged for some time to a young school teacher, Edith Roach, a minister’s daughter, from Thompsonville, south of Alliston. That year she accepted a school within an easy driving distance of London, but they seemed to drift further apart as he got more and more interested in his idea of trying these experiments. They broke off altogether by the time he went back to Toronto.
Now, though, he began to feel the need of a wife and a home of his own and met and began to date an x-ray technician by the name of Marion Robertson. Their wedding was planned for some time ahead, it could be a year, I forget. It wasn’t to be till after their house was built and ready for occupancy. But he was to deliver a paper in Jamaica, and in the company of other doctors, some of whom were taking their wives, were to spend two months in the Caribbean, stopping off ever so many places and examining sugar plantations, banana groves, etc., to try to find out why there was more of one disease in one place, and another among a different type of worker. It was suggested to him that it would make a perfect honeymoon, so they were married in a very quiet ceremony at the home of the bride’s uncle and away they went to the Caribbean. But, you know, it wasn’t such a perfect honeymoon after all, because most of the time the men were one place and the women another, as the women weren’t anxious to go tramping through plantations and talking to the workers.
It was discovered that among the workmen, there was no diabetes, but among the plantation managers and other well-to-do people, there was quite a bit. The peasants only used the unrefined sugar. But it was appalling the number of other diseases there were, and some of those tropical diseases were very terrifying.
This trip was in 1924.
In 1925, he went to Stockholm to deliver his Nobel Prize address.
In 1926, they went to the Canadian west coast for the first time, and there delivered addresses at conventions.
In 1928, he went to Scotland. That same year his son, Bill was born.
For some years now, Bill had been in Toronto working for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, first on Front Page Challenge where his job was to interview the guests and make arrangements for them to come to Toronto for the programme.
Last year (1967), Bill and his team spent some time in the Galapagos Islands, off the west coast of South America, where he directed a film on the wildlife there. Last fall he was sent to Egypt, where he has been directing another documentary for C.B.C., and it could be that he is not home yet. The film will probably not be ready for presentation for some time yet, but it will be a series coming once each week on T.V. He has never married. For several years he was film editor on the Sunday afternoon series, the Nature of Things.
In 1933, Dr. Banting went to Madrid where there was a very important congress of doctors from all over the world.
In 1935, he spent six weeks in Russia, where Dr. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov had giant laboratories and had remarkable success using dogs in experiments. He spent some time in his home which reminded him of a zoo, for dogs, monkeys and other animals both wild and tame, covered with patches, labels, and bandages were walking about everywhere. He stayed in homes of different doctors while in Russia, as well as when he was in other countries but did a lot of travelling during his six weeks there. He was in both Hungary and Germany before coming home.
In 1934, he was knighted. He had always wanted a more or less quiet life, and this didn’t suit him at all. He said it was a lot of nonsense, but it was one honour he couldn’t turn down.
There was one big conference he attended which was to commemorate the 100th year of the death of Pasteur. During the after-dinner speeches, his name was linked several times with Pasteur’s, and at the time, they didn’t know he was present, but he was found sitting on the floor at the back of the crowded hall. None of his honours turned his head.
He was always very gentle with children and animals, and it is a well- known fact that even when a mother couldn’t stop a baby from crying, he had only to touch the baby, and it would stop. Sometimes he would go back to the Banting Institute in the middle of the night, just because he thought some certain animal needed comforting then.
Sometimes he would be with a group of doctors in a home. If they missed him from their midst, they would probably find him drying dishes in the kitchen.
He started oil painting while in London but had to put them away during the time of his experimenting, and all the honours heaped on him, but sometimes at a conference he would be found drawing caricatures of the distinguished guests, and he hardly ever looked at a menu, without leaving somebody’s features drawn on it. When he found that he could keep to a routine again, he thought he would like to have help with his painting, and in order to meet artists, he went to them to see about buying a picture to start a collection of his own. One of these was A.Y. Jackson, who was one of the members of the Group of Seven. They found out they had a lot in common, and Jackson took him on some of his painting trips around Toronto. This developed into quite a friendship and they went somewhere nearly every year, most often to Quebec, where they would sit out in the open with freezing hands and frozen paints by the hour. In 1927 Jackson was going to the Arctic with a boat that made the rounds of the R.C.M.P. stations and Banting was so anxious to go too that he got the government to have him make a survey of the health of the Eskimos. They spent the longest time on Ellesmere Island, he looking after the medical needs and reporting on the general health of the Eskimos. They, of course, did a lot of painting too, and on more than one occasion nearly missed the boat.
The next year, the two men went to Great Slave Lake, and north to where no other white man to their knowledge, had ever been. When at home he started wood carving and did some very nice bookends, pipe racks, etc., and one big walnut chest that I always admired very much.
Around this time he decided he didn’t see his family enough and would like to have them visit him. First, he invited my cousin, Jean Banting and myself, his two oldest nieces, for a week, and of course, I will never forget that week. That very busy man left everything to entertain us each night of our visit, and we did what we liked during the day. He had by this time obtained a divorce, and he had a wonderful house-keeper looking after him as if he was her own. One night he took us to our first hockey match in Maple Leaf Gardens, and I remember to this day that Boston won over Toronto 3-1. We went to Loew’s Theatre one night and had box seats, which was a thrill for us. He took us to an opera at the Royal Alex or properly speaking, I guess it was an operetta, the Student Prince. We had dinner and an evening of bridge at the home of a doctor friend, Dr. Wells, who at the time was the leading bridge player in Toronto. Without seeing my hand, he repeatedly told me exactly what card to play. What a bore it must have been for him! We had lunch at the home of the writer Blodwen Davies, who had just finished the historical novel, “Romantic Quebec”. Her apartment was above the Guild of all Arts, and although it was after hours, she showed us everything there. He took us on a tour of the Banting Institute, where he stayed to play with the dogs, as he hadn’t had time during the day! Jean and I walked back to the apartment.
In 1939 he married for the second time. Her name was Henrietta Ball, who was a graduate of Mount Allison University and had come to work in the medical research department at Banting Institute. Their marriage was a completely satisfying one but unfortunately could not last long.
After his death, she left that department to become a doctor, and at the present time heads up the Cancer Detection Clinic at Women’s College Hospital.
Nine days before Canada entered the war, he joined the army, and immediately was in the midst of his research to relieve the suffering of the wounded. He worked on the preservation of blood serums, and on a neutralizer for mustard gas. They found an antidote that they hoped would work, so he had some of the mustard gas put on his leg, and went home taking the antidote with him. He arrived home to find a grass fire on the hill in his backyard, and in his efforts to put the fire out, he forgot all about using the antidote. The blistering gas meanwhile caused a serious burn which took a good six weeks to heal and left a deep scar. He recuperated from this at his mother’s home in Alliston He was also concerned with pilots losing consciousness at high altitudes, and they came up with the idea of a water-lined flying suit. The next step was to test it on an airman in-action overseas, so in February 1941 they got permission to go to England. Dr. Franks took the suit and equipment with him and went by boat, but Banting was to go on a day Navy Destroyer, to see about sea-sickness among the sailors. Suddenly he was to hurry to England before the Destroyer would get there and arrangements were made for him to go on a bombing plane. He flew from Montreal to Gander where for some reason he had to wait three days before taking off. For the first time in his life, he said he was afraid of the trip. The pilot was an expert of long experience, Captain Mackey. The navigator was Flying Office Bird, and the radio operator was William Snailham. Shortly after takeoff, one engine failed, and they turned back. They got their bearings, but then the wireless went dead, then the other engine failed, and they had to make a forced landing in the darkness and in a dense snow storm. There was only one tree in the whole area, and the wing of the plane struck it with terrific force, just twelve minutes after they had set out.
Mackey woke to consciousness an hour later and was not too badly hurt. The other two were dead and Sir Frederick unconscious. He had no idea how far he would have to go for help and hated to leave the unconscious man, who would sometimes come to, enough to dictate technical detail very rapidly, and Mackey was totally unable to understand the terms used. This continued for sixteen hours until finally, Mackey had to do something. He started plunging through five-foot drifts, not knowing how far he would have to go for help, but with a sprained ankle, he soon found he couldn’t go far, so turned back, only to find Banting fifteen feet from where he had been ever since the accident, and he was dead.
Mackey waited three days before being found, though he sent up flares repeatedly, and used sea markers to make black trails in the snow. When he was finally sighted, planes couldn’t land but parachuted food, clothing and medical supplies to him. The planes spotted two men hauling a sleigh load of trapped rabbits and dropped them a message. They dumped their load, and rushed on their snowshoes to the site, and with Mackey on their sleigh, took him to Musgrave Harbour, ten miles away. Other sleighs went for the three frozen bodies. On their arrival, the villagers had a short church service, then walking sixty abreast, they tramped a runway on a nearby lake where planes were waiting.
Sir Frederick’s funeral was from Convocation Hall where he had received his doctor’s degree twenty-four years before, and he was buried with full military honours in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
By his niece, Helen Gertrude Banting Jackson (1911-2002) Helen was the daughter of Thompson Banting, an older brother of Fred Banting.