INSULIN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 15, 18 January 1924, Page 6

INSULIN

NEW REMEDY FOR DIABETES

POSITION IN NEW ZEALAND

AND CANADA

An article recently appeared in " The Post" on insulin, the new remedy for diabetes which has attracted wide attention, especially in medical circles and journals. In that article Dr. D. Macdonald Wilson, Medical Superintendent of the Wellington Hospital, stated that since last August forty diabetic cases had been treated in the hospital with most satisfactory results. He alluded to the cost of insulin, and added that ag far as the Wellington Hospital was concerned those who could not afford Jo pay for the insulin were provided with it in the institution. There was no need, he added, for uny Wellington patient to go without the treatment merely "because he could not pay for it. This statement is confirmed by the geiierul .Health authorities, who emphasise the fact that under New Zealand's existing- hospital system insulin is available to all diabetic sufferers, including those who may not have the means to pay for the remedy. It is well that this should be borne in mind, in view of the most receiit developments in Canada in regard to the new treatment. Dr. Forbes Godfrey, Minister of Health of the Province of Ontario, Canada, recently announced that his Department would provide free insulin for all diabetics in the province unable to secure the treatment for themselves. Dr. Godfrey's act constituted a pioneering step of the first order, states a writer in the " American Review of Reviews." It was wholly unprecedented and almost revolutionary in conception and execution, in that it applied to thg every-day practice of government a principle of Communistic complexion— the right of the needy to share in the rarest privileges of the well-to-do. Coming from a staunch Conservative—a member •of a party -which, in Canada, has always been called the friend and protectoV of big interests, whether that meant" manufacturing or medicine—it was a sign of the times that will b» noted witß interest and appreciation the world over by students of humanitarian movements. " I want to put the working-man of Ontario in the same caste, as regards health," with the millionaire." said Dr. Godfrey, himself a practising physician in an Ontario town, in announcing the radical purpose of the new Cabinet. "Under this scheme of governmental distribution the. poor of this province will be able to obtain from the Department of Health exactly what the''millionaire has the means to purchase." Under the terms of Dr. Godfrey's decision, as ratified by Cabinet, insulin has been distributed gratis, since Ist September, to all sufferers in Ontario certified by their xph3-sicians as being unable to pay for the remedy. The supply for the province originates in the Connanght Laboratories of the University of Toronto; and, under Government control, it is divided.among the nine health laboratories located in, different cities of the province. Each of these laboratories is being placed in such a position, as to be able to undertake" for the physicians in its area any necessary laboratory work in connection with the administration of the insulin treatment: . INSTRUCTION IN TREATMENT. The better to serve the public ,in this respect, the University of Toronto, collaborating with the Toronto General Hospital, has provided during the past summer short courses of instruction in insulin treatment. To these courses have come physicians from all over Ontario, to the number of 600, each of whom is now fitted to prescribe insulin and to appraise properly its effects. Practically every attendant at the instructional courses was a general practitioner —as distinguished ,from specialists and research men—and most of them came from rural or semi-urban areas. Where will Ontario's example end f At present, indications "are that it may be widely. emulated. The way is open to other provinces,. and, indeed, to other countries, to follow this instance of enlightened administration. Already—for months past, indeed—inquiries are coming from far afield. One recent.request for free aid was from a confirmed diabetic in the State of .Florida: another pathetic petition came from England ;■ a third from a settler on the prairies of Saskatchewan, who wrote that he was penniless and suffering—unable to buy, yet hoping, even against hope, for Ontario's life-giving endowment of free insulin. Poignancy is added to such an appeal as this letter when it is stated that the intrinsic or commercial cost of insulin for an average course of treatment is practically prohibitive, except in the case of those well blessed in respect of financial resources. - ■ SOME SURPRISING FIGURES.To v what exact extent the humane action of* Ontario's Minister of Health /will affect its citizenship is hard to determine until the distribution of insulin over a period of some months at least, has afforded a gauge with which to form statistical tables. Already' returns are available for the. first two months of free issue, September and October. In September^ the nin.e laboratories above mentioned dis--tributed to 161 needy sufferers a-totall of 114,000 units, at a cost to the Government of £456. . October showed an increase of practically 53 per cent, in tho number of units, as well as in the number of patients treated. The distribution centres increased from nine to fifteen in number. It is estimated that there are in Ontario Province at "least 1000 people of that diabetic stage in -which insulin may prove effective, all of wlibrn are unable to" purchase a course treatment, in the ordinary way. Were the God frey legislation applied. throughout the Dominion of Canada, therefore, it would touch the lives of many thousands. Still vastly greater would be the benign influence of such a policy in the United States, where, recent medical opinion has stated, some 2,000,000 persons are victims of diabetes. In the face of these facts, it is gratifying to the man in the street to ' know—as all nitty know from the public press—that every facility is being given 1 for the freest possible world-wide mimu^ facture of insulin. The moment .the value of the discovery had been definitely determined, the University of Toronto placed its laboratories and the results of the years of work of its graduates, at the disposal of the world. Provision was made for the establishment of insulin factories in the United States, largely through the generosity of the Rockfeller Foundation. Rights in insulin manufacture were granted, as "well, to the great governing bodies of the Old World, notably Great Britain, where Dr. Banting was acclaimed at tha great World's Congress of Surgeons, and where to-day a monument in London to the young Canadian is proposed as a fit.tine token of pvuswu f f*Tßl