REMEMBERING THE FIRST MIRACLE DRUG: “It was injectable insulin, long sought by researchers all over the world and finally isolated in 1921 by a team of squabbling Canadians. With insulin, dying children laughed and played again, as parents wept and doctors spoke of biblical resurrections.”

The Insta-Wife’s great grandmother died of diabetes just a few months before insulin came out. A reminder that for every miracle drug, there’s a “faster, please.”

UPDATE: Reader Arie Friedman writes:

My grandfather was the first doctor in our family. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1928 and passed away when I was 12. During his eulogy, the most significant accomplishment remembered was that he was the first doctor in Michigan to use injectable insulin to save the lives of diabetic patients. I still remember my elderly relatives and my grandfather’s colleagues nodding their head at the word “miracle.”

And it was.