Photo credit: University of Toronto Libraries
Dr. Elliot Joslin was a scientist and educator at heart, who always sought to empower people living with diabetes. Without his contributions, the standard practice of managing diabetes with proper diet and exercise may have not been adopted universally.
Dr. Joslin was born in Oxford, Massachusetts on June 6, 1869. He studied at Yale and pursued medicine at Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1895. His interest in diabetes arose after his aunt was diagnosed with the condition. As a physician, this made him want to learn as much as he could about treating diabetes. Prior to insulin’s discovery, the best way to manage diabetes was to severely limit the patient’s food intake. This was a treatment that Dr. Joslin promoted until insulin was discovered.
Dr. Joslin continuously refined this diet-based diabetes treatment, modifying it according to the latest research. He carefully documented every diabetic patient he treated since 1893, noting their progression throughout his career. What started as a simple registry eventually spanned eighty volumes by Dr. Joslin’s death and remains the world’s largest collection of diabetes data today. At the time, diabetic patients all around the United States clamoured to be treated by Dr. Joslin, arguably making him the country’s first leading diabetes doctor.
Unlike most doctors at the time, he believed that improving the patients’ self-control and education was key to managing diabetes. In his writings, Dr. Joslin would represent his philosophy with a troika – the Russian word for a vehicle driven by three horses. He would later affirm that proper diet, exercise and insulin were all crucial elements in managing diabetes. Eventually, he would adopt the motif as the design for the first Victory Medals – an award that he created in 1948 for people who lived with diabetes for more than 25 years.
After insulin’s discovery in 1922, he set his sights on public education. He began with training “wandering diabetes nurses” who would regularly visit people with diabetes, educating them on how to help patients maintain a proper diet and manage their insulin. He also helped create “diabetes camps” to teach children how to manage their condition. Shortly after WWII, he expressed concerns of diabetes becoming an epidemic in the United States and convinced the government to commission a 20-year long study to investigate the prevalence of diabetes in the country.
He died on January 28, 1962, four years before the study was released which confirmed his concern. Since his death, his approach on managing diabetes has been validated by countless researchers who followed. Though he never saw the impacts of his efforts, his legacy continues to inspire many others around the world.
— Written by Michael Limmena