Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle Hardcover – Bargain Price, September 14, 2010
Author: Visit Amazon's Thea Cooper Page | Language: English | ISBN: B0055X5OB2 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle – Bargain Price, September 14, 2010
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You can download Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle – Bargain Price, September 14, 2010 for everyone book with Mediafire Link Download Link
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Cooper and Ainsberg present an inspirational record of how the confluence of just the right people at just the right time in just the right places launched a boon for diabetics the world over. When Elizabeth Hughes Gossett was laid to rest in 1981 at the age of 73, few people knew that, by all rights, she should never have lived long enough to enter high school, much less graduate college, marry, and have children. Fewer still may have known or appreciated that while still a child, she risked what little life she may have had left by participating in a medical experiment that, if successful, would save her own and millions of other lives. A remarkable story, made more so by the efforts of Frederick Banting, who tipped fate in Elizabeth’s favor. Just as the honeybee believes its wings will carry it through the air against all physical odds, Banting believed he could perfect a product—insulin—that would save the lives of diabetics. Bees fly and Banting did, and this account makes worthy reading. --Donna Chavez
Review
"The twentieth century witnessed many medical miracles, but perhaps none was so transformative as the discovery of insulin for the treatment for diabetes. Breakthrough is the fascinating tale of Nobel prize-winning research, of a young girl who should have died as a child but instead lived to see seven grandchildren, and of a drug that turned a death sentence into something more akin to a chronic nuisance. This book is an important read for anyone with diabetes. It is an enjoyable read for those who love mystery and human drama."--Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor of History, Columbia University
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Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle Hardcover – Bargain Price, September 14, 2010
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (September 14, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312648707
- ASIN: B0055X5OB2
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This book details the discovery of insulin and how that discovery affected the lives of Elizabeth Hughes and her family. Cooper, a playwright, and Ainsberg, an author, put together this book as a collaborative project. The book juxtaposes the details of the discovery and development of insulin as a therapy for diabetes with the diagnosis and subsequent health decline of Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of Charles Evans Hughes. Elizabeth Hughes was first diagnosed with diabetes in April 1919 at the age of 12. At that time, the best therapy for diabetes was Allen's starvation treatment, in which patients were put on a strict dietary regime which kept them on a knife's edge between sugar poisoning and outright starvation; indeed, as Cooper and Ainsberg note in this book, many of Allen's patients succumbed to starvation. Allen's severe dietary restrictions were no cure for diabetes, but merely a stopgap measure, with the hope that it would enable patients to survive long enough for a diabetes cure to be found. Elizabeth Hughes was one of the Allen's most famous patients, and one of the first for whom the starvation gamble paid off when insulin treatments began to be tested on human patients in 1922.
This book delves into the gritty details of the discovery and development of insulin, how a young doctor named Frederick Banting with no research experience but a unique idea was able to persuade veteran Toronto researcher Charles Best to let him try a summer project in his lab. Cooper and Ainsberg relate the details of Banting and Best's subsequent strife-filled collaboration. They also discuss the family background of Elizabeth Hughes and her well-known father, Charles Evans Hughes.
When I was a mere eleven years old, my parents noticed my brother attempting to smuggle a pitcher of water up to his bedroom. He admitted that he had been drinking a lot of late, and my parents became alarmed. Rushing him off to the hospital he was quickly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a strange and frightening time for the whole family, and I read everything I could on the disease to get an understanding of what was happening to my brother.
This book, takes the reader back in time to that amazing transitional time in 1922 when the diagnosis of diabetes changed from being a sentence of death, when the discovery of insulin gave so many people world-wide back their lives. It looks at the victims of the disease, focusing primarily on Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of the Secretary of State of the United States, and looks at the researchers whose activities resulted in the most important breakthrough in the treatment of the disease.
First off, I must agree that this book does take the barebones story of what happened in 1922 and before, fleshes it out with a good deal of "imagined" detail. Therefore this book is probably not terribly useful to someone who wants a reliable and scholarly history.
What this book is is more of what I would call a "popular history," that is, a book written to tell the story of the discovery of insulin, but in an entertaining and engaging manner. I for one found this to be a very informative and entertaining book. The early part that dealt with what families went through before the discovery of insulin was quite literally heartbreaking. And I must admit that when I got to the part where peoples lives were being returned to them (as opposed to living in a concentration camp-like sanitarium), I quite literally got tears in my eyes.
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