Elizabeth Hughes Gossett

Elizabeth Evans Hughes Gossett (August 19, 1907 April 21, 1981), the daughter of US statesman Charles Evans Hughes, was the first American, and one of the first people in the world, treated with insulin for type 1 diabetes. She received over 42,000 insulin shots over her lifetime. Early life Elizabeth Evans Hughes was born August 19, 1907, in the New York State Executive Mansion in Albany, New York, to Antoinette (Carter) and Charles Evans Hughes, who was Governor of New York at the time. Elizabeth developed diabetes in 1918 at age 11. At the time, the life expectancy of a Type 1 diabetic without treatment was usually no more than a few months. Since it was unable to metabolize sugars, the diabetic body would instead begin to burn fats. The dependence on fat would eventually lead to acidosis, followed by coma and death. The only known treatment was a starvation diet, in which the caloric intake was reduced to a level that the patient could tolerate without showing sugar in the urine. If the diet was followed religiously, a diabetic could expect to live for a couple of years before eventually succumbing to an infectious disease in their malnourished state. In spring 1919, Elizabeth Hughes was brought to Dr. Frederick M. Allen at his special clinic, the Physiatric Institute in Morristown, New Jersey. Allen put her on a strict diet and continued to monitor her condition over the next three years while she lived at home with a private nurse. She was and when she developed diabetes. Under diets that averaged 800 calories per day, her weight fell to by August 1922.