Credited to Romania. The discovery of insulin is usually credited to Frederick Banting, Charles Best, John Macleod and James Collip in Toronto, who treated a human patient in January 1922 and received the 1923 Nobel Prize. Paulescu published results in dogs in 1921, before the Toronto papers, and protested to the Nobel committee. Historians such as Ian Murray have argued he received too little recognition.
How it began
Nicolae Paulescu, professor of physiology at the medical school in Bucharest, prepared a watery extract of pancreas in 1916. Injected into a dog made diabetic by removal of its pancreas, it lowered the high blood sugar and suppressed sugar in the urine for a time. He was then called to service in the Romanian army and resumed the work after World War I. Between 24 April and 23 June 1921 he presented four papers to the Romanian section of the Society of Biology in Paris. A longer paper, sent on 22 June, appeared on 31 August 1921 in the Archives Internationales de Physiologie in Liege.
How it works
Paulescu called the extract pancreine. It was an extract of bovine pancreas in salted water, from which some impurities were removed with hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. His papers described its effect when injected into the blood of a diabetic animal, how the effect changed with time after injection, and its effect in a normal animal. He measured blood sugar, sugar in urine and ketone bodies in blood and urine.
Who pushed back
On 10 April 1922 Paulescu received Romanian patent no. 6254 for his method of making pancreine. By then a team at the University of Toronto had given a different, alcohol-based extract to a human patient, without success on 11 January 1922 and with success on 25 January. Frederick Banting and John Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Paulescu wrote to the Nobel committee claiming priority, as did the German physician Georg Ludwig Zuelzer.
What lasted
Ian Murray argued in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences in 1971 that Paulescu had received insufficient recognition for extracting the antidiabetic hormone and proving its effect in diabetic dogs. Murray reported the private opinion of Arne Tiselius, head of the Nobel Institute, that Paulescu had been equally worthy of the 1923 award.
Where it stands today
Paulescu's standing remains contested for another reason. He co-founded antisemitic political parties in Romania, and in 2003 the unveiling of his bust at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Paris was canceled after protests by Jewish organizations. A 2021 centenary article in Acta Endocrinologica, a Bucharest journal, presents the discovery of insulin as the peak of his work as an endocrinologist.
