The Roaring Twenties were often known as some of the best years for modern America. Medicine improved, jobs outside of physical labor became more apparent, and women were becoming more recognized as individuals. One of the most important developments in the 1920’s was insulin, an artificial hormone made to heal and allow diabetics to have actual lives outside of being bed ridden. This discovery and invention was revolutionary, and throughout time the product made has been refined and perfected for different kinds of uses. The idea of the revolution of modern medicine is also prominent in The Modern Temper, as the first developments and tests of insulin support the ideas within Dumenil’s book.
Lynn Dumenil explains that the United States was becoming “more organized, more bureaucratic, more complex” (Dumenil 11). This idea is shown when Frederick Banting and Charles Best began their experiments in 1921 and treated Leonard Thompson in 1922, they worked within universities, hospitals, and laboratories that reflected this new idea of organization and complexity. Their success depended on cooperation between public institutions and private companies. Dumenil asks, “Given the traditions of localism, democracy, and voluntarism, where should power reside in the complex, industrial, and bureaucratic society that America had become?” (Dumenil 19). The development of insulin reflects this debate over public and private power. The researchers at the University of Toronto patented insulin but sold the rights for one dollar to prevent monopoly control. However, they relied on private companies such as Eli Lilly to mass produce the drug. This shows how “the dilemma of the relative influence of the private sector versus the public sector was resolved largely in favor of the former” (Dumenil 20). Public research created insulin, but private business expanded its reach.
At the same time, insulin’s development reflects the “growth of corporate power” and “the transformation of work” that The Modern Temper describes (Dumenil 15). Medical research in the 1920s required specialized training, teamwork, and institutional organization. Scientists, physicians, laboratory technicians, and nurses all played defined roles. Insulin also became part of a growing consumer culture. Patients and families depended on a steady supply of a manufactured product. Health became linked to purchasing power and access to these goods, which reflects the expanding consumer economy of the decade. The production and distribution of insulin show how medicine entered the marketplace and became connected to corporate systems.
The third chapter’s focus on the New Woman also connects to insulin’s story. The rise of women in professional and public life changed medicine and healthcare. Women worked as nurses, laboratory assistants, and increasingly as medical students and researchers. Dumenil explains that changing roles for women were part of the decade’s larger transformation of social values. Insulin’s development took place in a world where gender expectations were being challenged and redefined. Dumenil writes that Americans felt both “progress and nostalgia” during the 1920s (Dumenil 20). Insulin clearly represented progress because diabetes became manageable rather than fatal. Yet the drug depended on large institutions and corporate production, which caused anxiety in a decade marked by “mounting hostility to federal intervention” (Dumenil 25). Insulin reflects the combined themes of public and private power, modern work and consumerism, and the changing role of women in a modern society.
