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Author: Caroline Cox
ISBN : B005IQBXPM
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Format: PDF
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In 1919, when 11-year-old Elizabeth Evan Hughes was first diagnosed with what we now know is Type 1 or juvenile diabetes, the medical community considered it a death sentence. In The Fight to Survive, Caroline Cox weaves the heart-wrenching story of Hughes’ role in a medical discovery that stopped the disease in its tracks—only weeks before her imminent death.
The only account of one of the very first patients to be successfully treated with insulin for juvenile diabetes, this book tells two fascinating stories in tandem: that of Hughes’ personal struggle, and the medical detective story that occurred during a time when endocrinology research made significant strides. It was Frederick Banting and John Macleod, doctors and researchers, who were finally able to create a testable version of insulin treatment to save Hughes’ life. She lived until the age of 74, and Banting and Macleod won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work. The Fight to Survive draws on primary sources to vividly bring the era to life, including interviews, newspaper reports, and Hughes’ own letters. Readers with an interest in medical history, pathographies, biography, diabetes, and American history will constitute this audience.
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- File Size: 2241 KB
- Print Length: 288 pages
- Publisher: Kaplan Trade; 1 edition (May 15, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005IQBXPM
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #685,606 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Free Download The Fight to Survive: A Young Girl, Diabetes, and the Discovery of Insulin
Caroline Cox's "The Fight to Survive" is the true story of Elizabeth Evans Hughes who, at the age of eleven, was diagnosed with what is known today as juvenile diabetes. In the twenty-first century, diabetes can be controlled with insulin and a proper diet, although there is still no cure. However, in the early nineteen hundreds, insulin was not yet available. Therefore, Elizabeth's only hope was to submit to an arduous regimen known as "starvation therapy," which was devised by Dr. Frederick Allen. Normally, a girl of Elizabeth's age would consume up to two thousand calories a day. However, for three years, she was forced to subsist on an average of eight hundred calories or less per day, in order "to prevent the sugar in her body from reaching toxic levels."
Cox admiringly depicts Elizabeth Hughes as a contented, self-disciplined, and grateful child who did as she was told. Her upbeat attitude helped her endure deprivation with relative equanimity. Although she was perpetually hungry and often physically weak, she found ways to occupy herself and take her mind off food. She read widely, socialized with friends, listened to music, enjoyed nature, wrote essays, and "tried her best in the face of enormous challenges to live well." She had self-confidence and enormous will power, and refused to be defined by her illness.
Elizabeth's father was Charles Evans Hughes, a lawyer who went on to hold important positions in the United States throughout his life: Governor of New York, Supreme Court Justice, Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One would not blame Elizabeth if she had been somewhat spoiled, demanding of attention, and resentful of her parents' preoccupation with their social and political activities.
This book is mostly set in the early 1920s, just after World War I, the influenza pandemic and a rapidly changing world. It's a time when epidemics, including polio, still broke out in communities. 10% of all children born alive died before their first birthday. And a diagnosis of diabetes was a death sentence.
Elizabeth Hughes lives a privileged life but this doesn't protect here when at 11 years old she is diagnosed with diabetes. Her parents take her to see Dr. Allen, whose treatment approach for diabetes is the Starvation Diet. Basically patients were only allowed the amount of food that wouldn't cause sugar to appear in their urine. In Elizabeth's case this means she's forced to live on a diet of no more than 750 calories a day, less when she's under stress or is sick. This is a diet that almost no-one can stick too, it's just too challenging.
But Elizabeth is a disciplined and determined young girl. Her family hires a full-time nurse to help Elizabeth live despite her diabetes. And this Elizabeth does really well, despite not being able to eat any of the food that her friends consume when she's at parties with them. She's determined to be a writer and really live in the world.
Banting and Best are two of a team of famous scientists who first isolated and produced insulin in 1922. But when Elizabeth was diagnosed, this team hadn't even been formed. This book does a masterful job of weaving the details of Elizabeth's life into the history of the early development of insulin.
As someone who is now kept alive because of insulin, I riveted by the details about those early experiments in Toronto that eventually led to insulin. They struggle with a lack of funding and lab equipment.
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