Listen&Learn: The discovery of insulin

Learn the history of the life-saving drug for people with diabetes.

Pre-listening vocabulary

• diabetes: a disease that causes people to have very high blood sugar levels
• treatment: a process that helps a person with a disease
• diet: a selection of food that is recommended for someone to eat
• pancreas: a particular organ in the body
• hormone: a chemical that affects the way the body works
• regulate: to control the amount of something

Listening activity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22 — 1.3MB)

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Gapfill exercise

Diabetes is a very treatable today. But historically, people with diabetes did not live very long. For many years, the best treatment that could offer was a diet low in sugar. In 1921, a Canadian doctor named Frederick Banting started to with the cells in a dog’s pancreas. He believed that the pancreas was the organ that controlled blood sugar. Banting did his at the University of Toronto with two other scientists named Charles Best and James Collip. During their research, they found the hormone that the uses to regulate blood sugar levels. They used this hormone to create a treatment for diabetes, which we now call insulin. In 1923, Banting won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work.

Comprehension questions

Discussion/essay questions

1. What is a medical discovery that you hope will happen in the near future?

Transcript

Diabetes is a very treatable disease today. But historically, people with diabetes did not live very long. For many years, the best treatment that doctors could offer was a diet low in sugar. In 1921, a Canadian doctor named Frederick Banting started to experiment with the cells in a dog’s pancreas. He believed that the pancreas was the organ that controlled blood sugar. Banting did his research at the University of Toronto with two other scientists named Charles Best and James Collip. During their research, they found the hormone that the body uses to regulate blood sugar levels. They used this hormone to create a treatment for diabetes, which we now call insulin. In 1923, Banting won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work.