Frederick Banting Quotes

Insulin is not a cure for diabetes; it is a treatment. It enables the diabetic to burn sufficient carbohydrates, so that proteins and fats may be added to the diet in sufficient quantities to provide energy for the economic burdens of life.

Someone once asked the celebrated biologist, Sir Frederick Grant Banting, why he cared so much about daily Communion. “Have you ever reflected,” he answered, “what would happen if the dew did not fall every night? No plant would develop. The grass and flowers could not survive the evaporations and the dryness that the day’s heat brings in one way or another. Their cycle of energies, their natural renewal, the balance of their lymphatic fluids, the very life of plants requires this dew….” After a pause, he continued: “Now my soul is like a little plant. It is something rather frail that the winds and heat do battle with every day. So it is necessary that every morning I go get my fresh stock of spiritual dew, by going to Holy Communion.

Every country has certain people who are visionaries, who have the gift to make things. Often these people are called “strivers”. In America, these strivers are celebrated: Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, etc. In Canada, we have no tradition for cultivating, protecting, and ultimately celebrating our strivers. It’s true that much attention is given to Frederick Banting and Charles Best, the two Canadian scientists who created synthetic insulin, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s almost as if Canadian schools should have a Strivers Ed. Program. This is a fundamental difference between Canada and America.