In case you didn't know, I am fascinated by medicine. Being a medical student, and all that. Every day I go into work and am privileged enough to see a thousand tiny marvels taking place in front of my eyes. Patients being given drugs that could stop them having a heart attack, receiving treatments that magic away their pain.
There are some things, however, that spark a real joy and excitement in me. Most of the time, science plods along. A person somewhere in the world has an idea, they get funding, they conduct a study where they ask a question and wait to see if they get an answer. A lot of the time, they don't. There are a lot of dead ends, a lot of things that can't be studied at all, even more where costs and time restrictions make it almost impossible.
But every now and then, a magical moment happens. A set of circumstances fall into place that allow the usual crawl of progress to be replaced by a sudden leap. These rare, precious moments, allow advances to be made quickly and dramatically. They literally mean the difference between life and death. Nowadays, of course, they're almost everyday. The fact that we have so many treatments, so many drugs and so many surgeries available to us is remarkable and.... normal now. People expect that when their knees become arthritic, they can get them replaced. Most people don't think that a hundred years ago, the surgery would have been impossible. Two hundred years ago we didn't even have good anesthetics. So, to celebrate some of the amazing changes that have taken place in the last few centuries, I'm going to be writing a series of short posts looking at my top medical marvels!
Earlier this week, a post popped up on my facebook feed letting me know that it was 97 years since insulin had first been used in humans. Insulin is really about as close as you can get to a miracle drug.
Now, most of us will know at least one insulin dependent diabetic. It's easy to dismiss it nowadays as something easily managed with injections, blood glucose monitoring. Diabetics can live normal lives, with normal life expectancy. It's almost impossible to imagine that, a hundred years ago, all those people would not be alive.
Type 1 diabetes used to be a nightmare of a disease. Sufferers, largely children, would go from healthy and happy to starving. Their bodies lost the ability to take glucose from their bloodstream up into cells. They would look like they were starving, no matter how much they ate. Then, they would collapse into a diabetic coma from which there was no return. Hospitals used to have wards full of "sleeping" children with no hope of recovery.
And when insulin appears on the scene... a single injection, and the sleeping children woke up. Within minutes they went from unconscious and dying to pretty much OK. And yes, there was still a long way to go with the development of insulin treatment. And it's still a treatment, not a cure. Diabetics still have an increased risk of developing all sorts of other health problems, from neuropathy to eye problems. But the amazing thing is, with insulin, they live long enough to develop those problems.
Insulin is just.... amazing. It's discovery is a key moment in medical history, and is responsible for so many amazing people being alive today. Truly a medical marvel.
There are some things, however, that spark a real joy and excitement in me. Most of the time, science plods along. A person somewhere in the world has an idea, they get funding, they conduct a study where they ask a question and wait to see if they get an answer. A lot of the time, they don't. There are a lot of dead ends, a lot of things that can't be studied at all, even more where costs and time restrictions make it almost impossible.
But every now and then, a magical moment happens. A set of circumstances fall into place that allow the usual crawl of progress to be replaced by a sudden leap. These rare, precious moments, allow advances to be made quickly and dramatically. They literally mean the difference between life and death. Nowadays, of course, they're almost everyday. The fact that we have so many treatments, so many drugs and so many surgeries available to us is remarkable and.... normal now. People expect that when their knees become arthritic, they can get them replaced. Most people don't think that a hundred years ago, the surgery would have been impossible. Two hundred years ago we didn't even have good anesthetics. So, to celebrate some of the amazing changes that have taken place in the last few centuries, I'm going to be writing a series of short posts looking at my top medical marvels!
Earlier this week, a post popped up on my facebook feed letting me know that it was 97 years since insulin had first been used in humans. Insulin is really about as close as you can get to a miracle drug.
Now, most of us will know at least one insulin dependent diabetic. It's easy to dismiss it nowadays as something easily managed with injections, blood glucose monitoring. Diabetics can live normal lives, with normal life expectancy. It's almost impossible to imagine that, a hundred years ago, all those people would not be alive.
Type 1 diabetes used to be a nightmare of a disease. Sufferers, largely children, would go from healthy and happy to starving. Their bodies lost the ability to take glucose from their bloodstream up into cells. They would look like they were starving, no matter how much they ate. Then, they would collapse into a diabetic coma from which there was no return. Hospitals used to have wards full of "sleeping" children with no hope of recovery.
And when insulin appears on the scene... a single injection, and the sleeping children woke up. Within minutes they went from unconscious and dying to pretty much OK. And yes, there was still a long way to go with the development of insulin treatment. And it's still a treatment, not a cure. Diabetics still have an increased risk of developing all sorts of other health problems, from neuropathy to eye problems. But the amazing thing is, with insulin, they live long enough to develop those problems.
Insulin is just.... amazing. It's discovery is a key moment in medical history, and is responsible for so many amazing people being alive today. Truly a medical marvel.
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