Banting

“In treating all of these [private] patients Banting was an inexperienced physician who happened to have supplies of a life-saving substance. He knew next to nothing about the complexities of diabetes, or the intricate principles of dietary balance worked out by the pre-insulin diabetologists” (Bliss, 102). Re Banting’s post-discovery research: “His research and reasoning were pathetically ill-informed, bearing the same relationship to serious physiological inquiry that a farmer’s tinkering with a beat-up Ford would to advanced engineering” (Bliss, 118).