The Stuff from Toronto

"If you can live until we get the new stuff from Toronto, we might save you," wrote the late Dr. H. Rawle Geyelin of New York's Presbyterian Hospital to a diabetic patient in the summer of 1922. The new stuff was insulin, just produced by Toronto's young Dr. Frederick Banting (with Medical Student Charles Best), who got the idea one sleepless night after trying to get his mind off a 28-day lack of patients.

Last week Dr. Geyelin's patient, Fruit Farmer Russell Kohl, 66, of Newburgh, N.Y., celebrated his 36th year of useful life through insulin. Patient Kohl first developed diabetes at 23, was not properly diagnosed for five years. He lost 55 Ibs. and weighed only 95 Ibs. when a physician finally spotted his ailment and gave Kohl three months to live. Then came Dr. Geyelin's momentous letter. if As one of the first U.S. insulin receiv-' ers, Kohl soon snapped back to life. He has since received more than 40,000 injections (now one or two a day). But Kohl hardly notices his ailment. Calling himself "semi-retired," he works ten hours a day caring for 25 acres of apples, plums, pears and cherries that he farms himself. It is unlikely that diabetes will ever stop him. Since the new stuff came from Toronto, the diabetes mortality rate has sharply declined from as much as 40% in severe types to as little as 2%.

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