99 years ago: Insulin first used (here in Canada)

On 11 January 1922, insulin was first used to treat diabetes.  In Canada.

Insulin had been discovered by three doctors at the University of Toronto:  Sir Frederick G Banting, Charles H Best and J.J.R. Macleod.

At that time, children in comatose states (from diabetic ketoacidosis) were kept in large wards of 50 or more patients.  Their deaths were considered inevitable and their families gathered at their bedsides during their final hours.

With nothing to lose from administering their purified insulin extract, Banting, Best, and James Collip (the Canadian biochemist who had purified the extract) went from bed to bed, injecting the entire ward. 

Before the three doctors had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their comas, and the ward resounded with joyful cries from their family members.

The discoverers of insulin were reluctant, at first, to patent their process for purified insulin, but when they learned that an American company (Eli Lilly) intended to hijack and monopolize the production of insulin, they obtained a patent in the name of the University of Toronto with one condition spelled out:

The patent will not be used for any other purpose than to prevent the taking out of a patent by other persons. 

When the details of the method of preparation are published, anyone will be free to prepare the extract, but no one can secure a profitable monopoly.

And that's a story more compellingly dramatic than any war story I've heard.