This photo captures one of the most incredible moments in medical history.
A child awakens from a coma due to ketoacidosis.
In 1922, we are in a sad place where many children were dying of diabetes.
Until that memorable day, scientists from the University of Toronto visited hospital wards and saw many children in comas and dying from diabetic ketoacidosis.
On the left is a 3-year-old child who is on the verge of starvation because he cannot produce insulin; on the right is the same child given insulin a year later in 1923.
Imagine a room with parents sitting hopelessly by their child’s bed. They wait for the inevitable death of their child. At that time, two men went from bed to bed injecting the children with a new drug: purified insulin extract.
When the last comatose child is injected, the first child begins to wake up. One by one, the children woke up from their diabetic comas.
A room full of death, despair, and darkness was transformed in minutes into a place of hope and joy.
This is thanks to Dr. Banting, Dr. Best, and Paulescu, the discoverer of insulin.