EXPLORATION: The First Patients
The first human with diabetes to receive insulin was Joe Gilchrist. However, it was administered orally and had no effect. The first injection of insulin was given to fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson, who had been diagnosed in 1919. When he received his first injection in January 1922, he was near death and weighed only sixty-five pounds. Thompson died from bronchopneumonia and complications from diabetes in 1935.