Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle

It is 1919 and Elizabeth Hughes, the eleven-year-old daughter of America's most-distinguished jurist and politician, Charles Evans Hughes, has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. It is essentially a death sentence. The only accepted form of treatment-starvation-whittles her down to forty-five pounds skin and bones. Miles away, Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best manage to identify and purify insulin from animal pancreases-a miracle soon marred by scientific jealousy, ...