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
Beatrice Islets about 7500 years ago when sea levels reached current levels. The islets are composed of sand and sandgrit. The islets is part of a drying spit at low water which falls to a depth of within about to the west. As of 1987 and again in 1996, the Beatrice Islets were reported as having no vegetation as a result of an exercise to remove the infestation of South African boxthorn. While sources dated 1987 and 1996 do not explicitly list fauna for Beatrice Islets, it is likely that fauna species which are exclusively birds reported as being present on The