Letters of Note is a blog of “Correspondence deserving of a wider audience.” The editor of the blog, Shaun Usher, somehow tracks down original correspondence between figures of note or about events of note and publishes images (and transcriptions) of them as letters of note.
The entry of April 8 is entitled “I am a fat boy now“. It’s a copy of a letter from Teddy Rider, a young Canadian boy, to Frederick Banting, one of the discoverers of insulin in the 1920′s. Also posted is the telegram from the Nobel Prize committee notifying Dr. Banting of his selection to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Medicine, along with J.R.R. Macleod, for the discovery.
Sometimes we forget just how recent some of these discoveries are.
In 1897 [just 25 years prior to the discovery of insulin], the average life expectancy for a 10-year-old child with diabetes is about 1 year. Diagnosis at age 30 carries a life expectancy of about 4 years. A newly diagnosed 50-year-old might live 8 more years.
By 1945 [25 years after the discovery of insulin], a newly diagnosed 10-year-old has a life expectancy of 45 years; a 30-year-old has 30.5 more years; and a 50-year-old might have 16 more years to live. The life expectancy for people with diabetes in 2004 is still lower than that for the general population by about 15 years.†
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