With one voice

摘要

Insulin is estimated to have saved the lives of over 5 million diabetics. It was discovered by Frederick Banting and his colleagues in Toronto in 1922, through experiments on dogs and rabbits. Cardiac surgery is only possible because of the heart-lung machine, which bypasses the blood circulation to the heart and allows it to be stopped. This apparatus was developed by John Gibbon in a series of experiments on dogs, conducted between 1937 and the first human open-heart operation in 1955. And although Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, he thought it was merely an antiseptic. It was not until 1939 that Howard Florey showed that it was an antibiotic by showing that it could protect mice from a virulent bacterial infection, still the standard test for antibiotic activity.