Canadian Contributions to Medicine and Science

Canadian Contributions to Medicine and Science Canada is known for new and innovative ideas which change the shape of the scientific field and enhance people’s everyday lives. Canadian doctors, scientists and engineers have contributed to the realm of medicine and science in many ways. Contributions Canada has made to medicine and science have had monumental impacts on Canada and the world, with the discovery of insulin which has saved many lives to the inventions of time zones and discovery of the t-cell receptor. These new discoveries have bettered the world we live in and brought attention to Canada as a world leader in the field of science. The discovery of insulin by Sir Fredrick Banting and Charles Best has saved the lives of millions around the world. Before the discovery of insulin doctors new diabetes directly correlated to the pancreas and sugar intake, but could not figure out how. Patients were put on a strict diet to limit sugar intake which at most would buy the person a few extra years. In some cases this diet would cause patients to die of starvation .Many doctors had tried to find the relationship between the pancreas and glucose levels with no luck. In early 1921 an unknown doctor, Fredrick Banting, went to Professor John Macleod of The University of Toronto with an idea; he was going to try what no one else could accomplish, find a cure for diabetes. In January of 1922, the new break through miracle drug was found at The University of Toronto labs by excreting insulin, unknown at the time, from the pancreases of dogs. This experiment was conducted by removing the pancreas of a dog which resulted in the dog showing early symptoms of diabetes. They then froze the pancreas, ground it up and filtered it which resulted in a mixture they called “isletin”. This mixture was then injected into the dog which showed immediate results, there was a drop in glucose and the dog became stronger and healthier looking. By giving the dog the injections