Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle Review

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(More customer reviews)When I was a mere eleven years old, my parents noticed my brother attempting to smuggle a pitcher of water up to his bedroom. He admitted that he had been drinking a lot of late, and my parents became alarmed. Rushing him off to the hospital he was quickly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It was a strange and frightening time for the whole family, and I read everything I could on the disease to get an understanding of what was happening to my brother.
This book, takes the reader back in time to that amazing transitional time in 1922 when the diagnosis of diabetes changed from being a sentence of death, when the discovery of insulin gave so many people world-wide back their lives. It looks at the victims of the disease, focusing primarily on Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of the Secretary of State of the United States, and looks at the researchers whose activities resulted in the most important breakthrough in the treatment of the disease.
First off, I must agree that this book does take the barebones story of what happened in 1922 and before, fleshes it out with a good deal of "imagined" detail. Therefore this book is probably not terribly useful to someone who wants a reliable and scholarly history.
What this book is is more of what I would call a "popular history," that is, a book written to tell the story of the discovery of insulin, but in an entertaining and engaging manner. I for one found this to be a very informative and entertaining book. The early part that dealt with what families went through before the discovery of insulin was quite literally heartbreaking. And I must admit that when I got to the part where peoples lives were being returned to them (as opposed to living in a concentration camp-like sanitarium), I quite literally got tears in my eyes.
Yes, I really enjoyed this book, and am very glad that I read it. As someone at least somewhat knowledgeable about diabetes, I was interested to learn about what diabetes was like before there was insulin, and how much better things are today. I don't hesitate to recommend this book.

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