AbstractAlthough diabetes has been known to exist for many centuries, it is only within the last century, and with the discovery and use of insulin, that dramatic progress has been made in its treatment. Collip, whose biochemical expertise aided Banting and Best in the preparation of the first insulins, was quoted1 as predicting that ‘If the substance works on the human, it will be a great boon to Medicine’. To those recipients of the first insulins, and for whom recovery was subsequently described as ‘ the closest approach to the resurrection of the body …︁our secular society can achieve’, 2 the benefits would have been expressed in much more personal terms.