BANTING'S IMPARTED YEARS (Music: Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers)
Oh the year was nineteen, ten and eight And to think I take up sugar now At eleven years old my fate was rung By the death o' me islets of Langerhans
REFRAIN Nobel them all! I was lost to cruel disease When a miracle cure saved mother her son Dried her tears Now I'm a croakin' man but I'll nevermore fear The last of Banting's imparted years
Young Frederick Banting cried aloud And to think I take up sugar now Through shelling and fire he scorned his wounds Til the fallen in battle be dressed and bound REFRAIN
Diabetes then was a sickening plight And to think I take up sugar now We'd down the least that a man could scoff Til the famine or saccharide capped us off REFRAIN
The Simcoe doc was a knife by trade And to think I take up sugar now When the practice failed he set his jaw To the treatment of glycosuria REFRAIN
The pancreas' form had long been known And to think I take up sugar now Islets that curb sugar low or high And digestive fluid from the acini REFRAIN
He worked as long I withered and waned And to think I take up sugar now Sweating with Best in animal trials To wring an elixir from the tiny isles REFRAIN
Then at length on death's cold mantle I lay And to think I take up sugar now The extract was drawn and the hype went in In the first e'er treatment of insulin REFRAIN
My vigour returned and in truth I thrived And to think I take up sugar now Banting & co shared a Nobel prize And the work saved north'ard of a million lives REFRAIN
So here I lay in my twenty-eighth year And to think I take up sugar now The pneumonia's fast in both me lungs But I want no islets of Langerhans REFRAIN