!68 Sansum drove his big Dodge Brothers sedan down Pacific Coast Highway to the packinghouse at night in order to retrieve the fresh bovine glands immediately after slaughter. They were placed in large tin milk cans filled with alcohol and loaded up in the back of Sansum’s sedan; he would not return home until nearly three in the morning. Unfortunately this was all taking place during Prohibition. On a return trip from the slaughterhouses in Los Angeles, Dr. Sansum was stopped in Malibu for transporting cans containing alcohol preservative in his car. After his brief arrest, he phoned officials in Washington, D.C., outlining the problem. Dr. Sansum and the Potter Clinic then received an alcohol permit through the federal authorities in Los Angeles, and treatments were continued in Santa Barbara with fresh insulin extracts.12 In February 1923, Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals shipped its first experimental insulin to ten selected doctors in the U.S., Dr. Sansum being one of them. However, local production of insulin was still needed to match the demand of Sansum’s many seriously ill patients. Within a month, the free supply of experimental medicine ended as Lily’s production became commercially available. Dr. Sansum announced that they would begin charging for the insulin, which was previously provided at no cost to the patients other than the $21-a-week fee for their stay in the hospital. His charge to the patients was below cost, since it did not account for equipment and depreciation (It should be noted that Sansum never turned away a patient for lack of ability to pay.) By this time, Dr. Sansum had received a gift of a one hundred-ton hydraulic
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NOTICIAS
press from a grateful parent of a patient which allowed him to produce much larger quantities of insulin. Sansum’s chemist, Dr. Blatherwick, was able to make local insulin far more potent as well.
By the end of 1923, the cost of locally produced insulin dropped from $100 a day to $20.13 Still, the Potter Metabolic Clinic's expenses were running $60,000 per year, with annual revenues of $40,000. Thankfully, the Clinic received generous outside support, and by the end of 1924, thirtyone donors contributed more than $33,000