The Banting Enigma
by William R. Callahan

Few people could have predicted that a son and heir born to William and Margaret Banting in the Ontario farm belt a few years before the end of the nineteenth century would turn out to be one of history’s most important medical benefactors, as a co-discoverer of life-saving insulin, barely two decades into the twentieth. Or that, in the wake of the bloodiest conflict in human history—the First World War, this same, now famous Canadian would also become one of the world’s most forceful proponents of  chemical and biological weapons, and of germ warfare.

Young Fred Banting rode to school on a mare named Betsy, helped with the chores—at one stage, his special responsibility was cleaning out the chicken house—and perhaps because his steady girlfriend was the local clergyman’s daughter, considered submitting himself as a candidate for the Methodist ministry.

He headed off to university, and to this point his world unfolded in the normal, accepted manner that, as a healthy offspring of a reasonably well-off farm family, he had, perhaps, a right to expect.

Then came the Great War, and for Banting, for millions of young men like him, and for people everywhere, everything changed.

One day a physician newly returned from the killing fields of France arrived on campus to lecture students of the University of Toronto on what was really going on “over there.” His purpose was to emphasize the pressing need for more medical graduates to work at saving the lives and limbs of wounded Canadian soldiers on the battlefields of Europe.

A graduate of McGill and Scotland’s Royal Infirmary, Lieutenant Colonel Cluny Macpherson was chief medical officer of the Newfoundland Regiment; his home was in St. John’s, capital of the neighboring British Crown colony. He recalled for the overflow audience the awful scenes as chlorine gas, unleashed in canisters by forces of the German Kaiser, was employed against Canadian, British and French troops for the first time at Ypres in the last week of April 1915.

“It is almost too horrible to describe,” said Macpherson, who at the time had been on loan to the Canadians to help upgrade their field hospital facilities. “Although the Allies had intelligence that the Germans were planning something new, something very big, the reports were given little credence. The result was that the attack came as a total surprise, devastating to the unsuspecting Allied troops.

“It was early morning. The sun was just becoming visible over the horizon.” The students listened in rapt attention as he continued. “The forward lookouts noticed a grey fog spreading silently over the ground on a light breeze, from the direction of the enemy trenches. Suddenly, men were choking and coughing. Many were overcome and died where they fell because the medical people were unable to help them—being afflicted by the gas themselves.

“I think it was the quiet . . . the eerie silence with which the killer gas spread into the Allied lines, that was so shocking. Nobody could quite believe that it was happening.”

He noted in passing that the use of toxic chemicals as weapons of war had been foreseen at an international peace conference at The Hague some fifteen years earlier. However, a resolution calling on the nations to “abstain from the use of . . . asphyxiating or deleterious gases” had received little support.

A tall, trim, authoritarian figure in military uniform, Macpherson was most impressive. He described in clipped, clinical tones how, after a few days, Allied troops began to be issued with cotton pads, impregnated with a chemical solution, that could be tied over the nose and mouth. But it was an awkward solution at best, and offered little or no protection against chemical weapons such as the mustard gas that the Germans soon began using. That gas caused severe, slow-healing burns to the skin and irreversible damage to the eyes and respiratory tract.

Had the war continued into 1919, it surely would have become an all-out fight employing chemical weapons on a large scale. The Germans were impressed with their success, which had exceeded expectations; the British realized they could not fail to meet the enemy on his own ground.

Fortunately for thousands of men on both sides who would have been blinded, had their lungs irretrievably damaged, or been permanently disfigured, the war was over in November. An armistice took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

The tall, gangling Banting was in the forefront of admiring students who crowded around Macpherson at the conclusion of the lecture. They were eager to shake his hand and to make the acquaintance of a man they accepted, without question, as a true battlefield hero.

“It is a great privilege to meet you, sir,” Banting addressed the Newfoundland soldier-physician. “May I ask . . . Aren’t you the inventor of the first gas mask for use on the battlefield a few months ago? I realize that it might have seemed immodest for you to mention it in your lecture, but I feel you should be given full credit, if I may say so.”

The officer, whose obvious reserve failed to allay the youthful enthusiasm of his questioner, chose not to respond other than to nod slightly.

“I think this business of chemical weapons is not going to go away,” Banting continued. “We can expect more of it in future, rather than less. It seems the only way nations can defend themselves is to have the same weapons, or more and better—for defensive purposes, of course—as those who might attack them. Can there be any alternative?”

“Well, young man—what did you say your name was, Banting? Well, Mr. Banting, that is quite perceptive. I’m afraid I can’t really disagree with you,” Macpherson responded gravely, and as he turned to accompany his host from the assembly room, added “unfortunately.”