Eva Saxl Biography | Eva Saxl

Eva Saxl (1921–2002) was a self-taught manufacturer of insulin and an advocate for people with diabetes.

Saxl was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In 1940, during World War II, she and her husband, Victor Saxl, fled to Shanghai, China. In Shanghai, a year later, Saxl was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 the Japanese occupation of China was tightened, and soon all the pharmacies in Shanghai were closed. Saxl had no legal access to insulin. It was possible to buy insulin on the black market using one-ounce gold bars for payment. But that was not the safest option; one of Eva’s friends died from using the black market insulin.

Eventually, Victor and Eva decided to get insulin another—highly unconventional—way: make it themselves. The book “Beckman’s Internal Medicine”[Note 1] described the methods that Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best first used to extract insulin from the pancreases of dogs, calves, and cows in 1921.

A Chinese chemist lent them a small laboratory in the basement of a municipal building, where they attempted to extract insulin from pancreata of water buffaloes. After much work, they finally produced brown-colored insulin. The insulin was tested on rabbits starved for twenty-four hours and then divided into two groups. One group was injected with the extracted mix, and the other with Eva’s insulin. Without equipment to test the rabbits’ urine or blood the best way Victor could test the potency of the insulin was to see if the rabbits experienced the same hypoglycaemic shock as the other rabbits. After testing the insulin on rabbits for more than a year, Eva was running out of conventional insulin and cautiously tried it on herself-–and it worked.

In the Jewish ghetto where they were living, many other people with type 1 diabetes were also in dire need of insulin. Eva gave her insulin to two boys in a nearby hospital who was in diabetic comas.

With a successful batch of homemade insulin, the Saxls began production of insulin for all people with diabetes in the Shanghai Ghetto. In all, over 200 people survived between 1941 and 1945 and there were no fatalities reported as a result of tainted insulin.

The Saxls left Shanghai after World War II and emigrated to the United States. Eva and Elliott P. Joslin, MD, founder of today’s Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts, befriended each other, and soon Dr. Joslin began inviting Eva to give lectures to groups of children and diabetes organizations. She became the first vocal spokesperson for juvenile diabetes. Her husband worked for the United Nations.

In 1968, Victor Saxl died and Eva moved to Santiago, Chile to live with her brother, her only living relative. There she would remain vigilant as an advocate for people with diabetes. Eva Saxl died in 2002 in Santiago.

The Saxls’ story was dramatized by the 1956–1958 CBS television show Telephone Time in an episode titled “Time Bomb”.

Eva Saxl Age

Eva was 81 years old, She was born in 1921, in Prague, Czechia. She Died: 2002, in Santiago, Chile

At 81 years of age, Eva Saxl has a lifetime of rewarding accomplishments behind her—careers as a writer, teacher, philanthropist and lecturer and a history of living with type 1 diabetes for more than 60 years with no complications.

Eva Saxl Husband | Married

Victor and Eva Saxl married in 1940 in Prague. Barely, newlyweds, this Jewish couple fled their homeland to escape the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. They found asylum in Shanghai, China. But this was no Shangri-La. The Jewish ghetto in Shanghai housed 30,000 refugees who lived in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation.

Less than a year later, doctors diagnosed Eva with diabetes. Victor vowed to take care of her under any circumstances. He took an active role in her treatment by giving her daily insulin injections. Then World War II came to the Pacific as America declared war on Japan. Japan clamped down on its territories and cut off all medical supplies.

The people with diabetes in Shanghai searched for new sources of insulin as supplies dwindled. Black-market insulin was extremely expensive, of unknown quality, and sometimes poisoned. Victor begged the Japanese army to resume insulin shipments. But they rejected his pleas because this was war, and casualties were expected.

Only one option remained for the Saxls – make the insulin themselves. Victor borrowed a medical text that described the process, and a food chemist provided lab space. Researchers took years to perfect the refining of insulin into a safe and effective form. Victor had only weeks.

His first batch looked like murky dishwater, not clear and colorless like pure insulin. Further, he had no idea of its potency or if it was contaminated with bacteria. Insulin is fragile; heating it to kill bacteria also breaks it down. So the medicine meant to help Eva could also make her sick – or worse.

Despite the risks, Eva volunteered to test the homemade insulin herself. Victor and a physician friend brought it to her. Victor injected Eva with a dose then left the room — he couldn’t bear to watch if she had a bad reaction. Eva and the doctor waited while Victor prayed in the next room. One hour. Two hours. Miraculously, Eva felt the insulin working and experienced no side effects. The three rejoiced, but only briefly. Victor ran the remaining batch to a nearby hospital where two patients lay near death in diabetic comas. After receiving the insulin, both survived.

The Saxls produced insulin for over 400 people in Shanghai over the next five years. At war’s end, they met with a US Army medical officer who brought them supplies of refined insulin. The Saxls cried when they saw the vials of the clear, pure liquid again.

Victor Saxl’s love, dedication, and perseverance saved not only his wife but hundreds of other diabetic patients in Shanghai. But let’s not forget Eva. She courageously volunteered to test the homemade insulin on herself, not knowing its possible effect on her — or if she’d even survive. These two heroes remind us that acts of bravery during wartime do not always happen near the front lines.

Eva Saxl Image

Eva & Viktor Photo

Diabetes Legends: Eva Saxl – who made her own insulin during WWII

Eva Saxl was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1940 at the age of 19. Alongside her husband, Victor, Eva was able to survive World War II by making her own insulin.

The risks were vast, but when Eva’s supply of insulin ran out her options were sparse. Subsequently, she and Victor embarked on a path that would earn them worldwide acclaim from the diabetes community.

This is the story of how the Saxls made their own insulin which not only kept Eva alive but the lives of an estimated 400 people.

Evacuating Czechoslovakia

Eva and Viktor fled Czechoslovakia, which had been occupied by the Nazis, in 1940. They made the boat trip across the Suez Canal to China, where they settled in Shanghai.

Eva became an English teacher, while Victor found work as an engineer. Eva’s type 1 diagnosis came when she began experiencing frequent thirst. One night she collapsed at the dinner table and was then put onto an insulin regime.

When the pharmacies closed down following the increasing Japanese occupation of China, Eva lost any legal access to insulin. She considered procuring the drug through the black market but resisted after one of her friends died from injecting contaminated black market insulin.

After managing to get a copy of “Beckman’s Internal Medicine”, a book which detailed how Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered and purified insulin in 1921, Eva and Victor attempted making insulin themselves.

Homemade insulin

Banting and Best extracted insulin from the pancreases of dogs in 1921, but with animal pancreases and money scarce, the Saxls knitted stockings and sold them in order to purchase water buffalo pancreases.

After finally producing a bottle of brown insulin in a small laboratory lent to them by a Chinese man, the Saxls tested the insulin on rabbits.

The risks included not knowing if the pancreases were contaminated with bacteria and if the bacteria could be removed without destroying the insulin. The Saxls also didn’t know just how potent the insulin was and if could induce hypoglycemia.

Eventually, Eva tested the insulin on herself, and it worked. Soon after, Eva and Victor began working on making enough insulin to medicate everyone with diabetes living with them in the Shanghai ghetto, which was roughly around 400 people.

Insulin clinic

Victor immediately took the insulin bottle to a nearby hospital after it worked on Eva. He administered it to two diabetics close to death, who both survived, with one going on to reportedly name his son Victor.

The Saxls went on to set up a clinic at a nearby hospital, where they would give patients 16 units a day. This was all they could ration per person, but it kept everyone alive.

Rather than requesting payment, Eva asked people to donate money to the man who had lent them the laboratory they used to produce the insulin.

American liberation

When the Americans liberated the Jewish ghetto Eva and Victor were staying in, they were given a case of clear insulin to distribute to those who needed it.

The Saxls then left China for New York City, where their achievements made them famous: President Eisenhower invited them to the White House, a Hollywood documentary was made about them and Eva became a spokeswoman for the American Diabetes Association.

During a time when diabetes awareness was grossly misinformed, Eva’s television appearances were revolutionary in detaching the stigma attached to diabetes during the 1940s and 1950s.

Following Victor’s death in 1968, Eva moved to Santiago, Chile to be with her brother, who had emigrated there during the war. She worked to supply underprivileged children with medicine.

Eva Saxl died in 2002 in Santiago.

Eva Saxl History

WWII HERO SAVES T1D LIVES WITH HOME-BREW INSULIN

Anyone who lives with T1D knows a few things about overcoming obstacles. But not all obstacles are equal. Consider the story of Eva Saxl, the diabetes legend who made her own insulin — yes, I said made her own insulin — during World War II to survive, showcasing the power of human innovation under the direst circumstances.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Eva was 19 years old in 1940. Her native country was under Nazi occupation. As the war continued to rage across Europe and Jewish persecution mounted, Eva and her husband, Victor, both of whom were Jewish, fled by boat, settling in Shanghai after traveling across the Suez Canal to China.

While working as an English teacher in China, Eva began to experience severe and frequent thirst and was diagnosed with T1D. After collapsing at the dinner table one night, she was put on an insulin regime.

Her condition was completely manageable at first — T1D patients had been living healthy lives with insulin regulation since the mid-1920s. Furthermore, she had work, access to medical care, and a support system. That all changed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Saxl and her fellow residents in the Jewish ghetto watched as the Japanese tightened their occupation of China. All Shanghai pharmacies were closed. Suddenly they were without access to insulin.

Many turned to the black market to survive, but Eva wasn’t about to stand for those risks. After seeing a friend die from injecting contaminated black-market insulin, Eva managed to get a copy of “Beckman’s Internal Medicine.” The book gave a detailed account of the methods Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best — the Canadians who first discovered insulin and recognized the peptide’s ability to regulate blood sugar — used to extract and purify insulin from a dog, calf, and cow pancreata in 1921. Eva and Victor suddenly had their answer. And it was a radical one at that. They would follow Banting and Best. They would learn to make their own insulin.

Without access to dogs, calves, or cows, Eva knit stockings and sold them to purchase water buffalo pancreata. Then, in a small basement laboratory in a Chinese municipal building, the couple got to work. After months of trial and error, they were able to produce brown-colored insulin, a far cry from the clear, laboratory-derived insulin they were used to. The risks were myriad. The pancreata could have been contaminated with bacteria. There was no way to test the extracted insulin’s potency. What if it caused infection? What if it induced hypoglycemia?

With limited means and tools, a controlled test was their only chance. The Saxls divided rabbits into two groups. They injected one group with their extracted insulin and one group with Eva’s pharmaceutical insulin. Then they watched to see if the two groups experienced the same blood sugar reactions and symptoms. After running tests on rabbits for more than a year, Eva was running out of conventional insulin. Without any other options, she tried her home-brew on herself. It worked.

Victor immediately administered the insulin to two local diabetics close to death. Both survived. And the Saxls went on to start an insulin clinic at a nearby hospital. They were only able to give patients 16 units of insulin a day. But it was enough to keep an estimated 400 people alive until American soldiers liberated the Shanghai ghetto in 1945.

Under the grimmest circumstances, Eva Saxl found an answer. Between 1941 and 1945, the years she was doling out her home-brewed concoction, not a single death was reported in the Shanghai ghetto from tainted insulin. The Saxls left China for New York City shortly after the liberation. Their efforts had made them famous, and for years Eva was a leading diabetes spokesperson who worked doggedly through her lifetime to inform the public and erase stigmas around T1D.