1900-1915

•  Specific “fad” diets introduced for diabetics including the "oat-cure" (in which the majority of diet was made up of oatmeal ), the rice cure, "potato therapy" and the milk diet. Some diabetics believed that abiding by these diets would cure them.

1908

•  Georg Zuelzer, a German scientist, provides the first injection of a pancreatic extract which would repress glycosuria.

1910-1920

•  Frederick Madison Allen and Elliot P. Joslin emerge as the two leading diabetes specialists in the United States.

1912

•  Banting enrolls in medicine at the University of Toronto.

1913

•  Studies Concerning Glycosuria and Diabetes written by Allen. The book encourages scientists and doctors to develop therapies for diabetic patients.

Frederick Madison Allen

1914

•  Allen introduces his Starvation Diet for diabetes patients. Patients were starved until the sugar disappeared from their urine and then put on a diet of about 1,000 calories per day. They weren't allowed to ingest fat for fear of producing acidosis. Diabetic coma was avoided, but patients largely were unfit for ordinary life activities. In the absence of anything better, however, the Starvation Diet was widely used as a treatment.

1919

•  Allen publishes Total Dietary Regulation in the Treatment of Diabetes, citing exhaustive case records of 76 of the 100 diabetes patients he observed. He becomes the director of diabetes research at the Rockefeller Institute.

1919-20

•  Allen establishes the Physiatric Institute in New Jersey - the first clinic in the United States to treat patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, and Bright's disease.

July 1, 1920

•  Banting opens his first office in London, Ontario. He receives his first patient on July 29 and earns a total of $4 for his first month of work.

Best, Banting and their diabetic dog, circa 1922.

October 31, 1920

•  Banting conceives of the idea of insulin after reading Moses Barron's “The Relation of the Islets of Langerhans to Diabetes with Special Reference to Cases of Pancreatic Lithiasis” in the Nov. Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics . For the next year, with the assistance of Best, James Collip and John Macleod, Banting continues his research using a variety of different extracts on de-pancreatized dogs.

1921

•  Banting, Best and crew discover insulin and successfully treat a de-pancreatized dog.

1922

•  One of Collip's insulin extracts is tested on a human being - a 14-year-old boy from Toronto named Leonard Thompson; The treatment was considered a success by the end of the following February.

1922 - Diabetic patient before (top) and after (bottom) insulin treatment.

•  Eli Lilly and Company and the University of Toronto form a partnership to produce insulin in bulk.

October 25. 1923

•  Banting and Macleod are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on diabetes. Banting shares his award with Best while Macleod shares his award with Collip.

1940s

•  American Diabetes Association is founded.

•  Scientists discover a connection between diabetes and kidney and eye disease.

February 21, 1941

•  Banting dies in a plane crash.

1944

•  The standard insulin syringe is developed, helping make diabetes management more uniform.

1949

•  Best co-founds the Diabetic Association of Ontario which later becomes the Canadian Diabetes Association.

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