CURE FOR DIABETES

Southland Times, Issue 18962, 8 June 1923, Page 7

CURE FOR DIABETES

MANUFACTURE OF INSULIN. LONDON, May 20. The possibility of creating a valuable new industry in Australia lends special interest to the discovery of insulin, the new cure for diabetes, successfully tested during the last five months by Dr. Isaac Jones, a noted Victorian physician, now on the staff of St. Thomas’ Hospital, London. Dr. Jones told a representative of the Sydney Sun that there was an opportunity for Australia to enter a new field of industry. She could produce large quantities of insulin, which was scarce. Owing to the smallness of the number of animals slaughtered in Europe, it was possible to produce only limited supplies, which were consequently expensive.

Australia could manufacture on a commercial scale, because she has unlimited supplies of pancreas, from which insulin is manufactured by a simple treatment with alcohol, the only other expense in the process. An immense market in Europe would be a certainty.

Dr. Jones added that British drug manufacturers and the Medical Research Council have men waiting at slaughter houses. As soon as an animal is killed, they take the pancreas, which is shredded and placed in alcohol. It is rushed to hospitals by a motor-car, and submitted to a five-days’ process, after which it is ready to be administered.

There is a great opportunity for Australian, and particularly Queensland, drug houses, to co-operate with meat traders in the production of insulin. The drug is injected subcutaneously twice a day. Patients have been admitted to hospitals in a state of coma, regarded as incurable, and with only a few days to live. They have been treated with insulin, in conjunction with a new dietary, and have quickly rallied and returned to their daily work. -

It is impossible yet to say how long it is necessary to continue the insulin,treatment for a permanent cure, but the improvement in sufferers indicate that insulin is a great advance on the previous methods of treating diabetes, and should be generally adopted.