Margaret and Charley: The Personal Story of Dr. Charles Best, the Co-Discoverer of Insulin

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practising in
Toronto.

Without ever suggesting it, Henry Best wants the world to know that his
distinguished father was more than an internationally renowned academic
and researcher. Charles Best was also a well-rounded human being with
skills that spanned the spectrum of experience from loving parent to
professional-level athlete. Best Jr., a trained historian, has produced
a biography that is straightforward, almost conversational in tone, and
greatly indebted to his mother’s lifelong, voluminous diary and his
own personal recollections. Not surprisingly, the author is unable to
maintain a professional detachment while relating the events that led to
Drs. Fred Banting and John Macleod receiving the 1923 Nobel Prize for
the discovery of insulin, while Charles Best was relegated to the
sidelines.

A generation of health-care students at the University of Toronto
gained their knowledge of physiology from the textbook written by
Professors Best and Taylor. As one of those students, I was well aware
of Best’s contributions to diabetes research, but had little knowledge
of his participation in heparin purification or histamine research. In
this biography, Henry Best has successfully transformed the prematurely
successful research student into a figure of international stature and
broad accomplishment.