History of diabetes further clarified in 1921, when Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best repeated the work of Von Mering and Minkowski, and went further to demonstrate they could reverse induced diabetes in dogs by giving them an extract from the pancreatic islets of Langerhans of healthy dogs. The islets of Langerhans was discovered in 1869 by an anatomist named Paul Langerhans. He identified the keys cells in the pancreas which produce the main substance that controls glucose levels in the body. Banting, Best, and colleagues (especially the chemist Collip) went on to purify the hormone insulin from bovine pancreases at
Paul Langerhans of his new bride “three indescribably happy years” followed. In autumn of 1887, progressive renal failure brought his medical activities to an end. He developed leg oedema, crippling headaches and transient memory loss. Sometimes he stopped in the middle of a sentence and was unable to continue. He died of uraemia on 20 July 1888, five days before his 41st birthday. He is buried in the British Cemetery of Funchal on Madeira, a place he had chosen, describing it as a “true graveyard, isolated and quiet, a good place to rest.” Paul Langerhans Paul Langerhans (25 July 1847 – 20