Andrew Wiper

Dr. Zbigniew Religa, a Polish doctor, anxiously watched a screen to check his patient's response after a heart transplant. The surgery was complex and lasted 23 hours. In the photo, you can see one of his colleagues who helped him with the operation asleep in the corner. Dr. Religa was a trailblazer for heart transplants in Poland. The surgery was seen as nearly impossible at the time, but he took the risk, and the operation was successful. The patient, Tadeusz Żytkiewicz, lived for 30 years after the operation, outliving Dr. Religa. The photo was taken by James Stanfield in 1987. He was documenting Poland's struggling and outdated free healthcare system, which was in crisis during the 1980s. The 'National Geographic' chose this picture as the photo of 1987, and it was named one of the 100 most significant photos in history.

In 1922, a team of scientists went to the Toronto General Hospital, where numerous children with diabetes - often upwards of 50 - were housed in wards. Most of these children were in diabetic comas. In what can only be described as their deathbeds, these children were waiting for a fate that, at the time, was deemed certain. However, these scientists, brimming with determination, promptly began administering a newly purified insulin. As they injected the final comatose child, a miracle happened - the first child who had received the injection started to regain consciousness. And, one after another, the rest of the children also began to wake up from their diabetic comas. What was once a room of despair and imminent death had become a beacon of hope and joy. The discovery of insulin was made by Frederick Banting and Charles Best under the supervision of John Macleod at the University of Toronto during the early 1920s. They were assisted by James Collip, who played a crucial role in purifying insulin, thus paving the way for successful diabetes treatment. Their ground-breaking work earned Banting and Macleod the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1923.