An historical look at diabetes

1500 B.C.

•  Early healers notice that ants are attracted to the urine of people with a mysterious emaciating disease.

1552 B.C.

•  Earliest known record of diabetes mentioned on 3rd Dynasty Egyptian papyrus by physician Hesy-Ra; mentions polyuria (frequent urination) as a symptom.

150 A.D.

•  Diabetes described by Arateus as “the melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.”

c. 164 A.D.

•  Greek physician Galen of Pergamum mistakenly diagnoses diabetes as an ailment of the kidneys.

1000s

•  Greek physicians prescribe exercise, preferably on horseback, to relieve excess urination.

•  Diabetes commonly diagnosed by “water tasters” who drank the urine of those suspected of having diabetes; The urine of people with diabetes was thought to be sweet-tasting; As such, the Latin word for honey – mellitus – is incorporated into the condition's name and “diabetes mellitus” is coined.

1500s

•  Paracelsus identifies diabetes as a serious general disorder.

Early to mid-1800s

•  First chemical tests developed to indicate and measure the presence of sugar in urine.

•  Priorry, a French physician, advises diabetes patients to eat extra large quantities of sugar as a treatment.

•  Claude Bernard, a French researcher, studies the workings of the pancreas and the glycogen metabolism of the liver.

•  I.V. Pavlov, a Czech researcher, discovers the links between the nervous system and gastric secretion, making an important contribution to science's knowledge of the physiology of the digestive system.

•  Catoni, an Italian diabetes specialist, isolates his patients under lock and key in order to get them to follow their diets.

The"islets of Langerhans" constitute 1-2% of the mass of the pancreas.

1869

•  Paul Langerhans, a German medical student, announces in a dissertation that the pancreas contains two systems of cells. One set secretes the normal pancreatic juice while the function of the other was unknown. Several years later, these cells are identified as the “islets of Langerhans.”

1870s

•  Bouchardat, a French physician, notices the disappearance of glycosuria (sugar in the urine) in his diabetes patients during the rationing of food in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War; He formulates the resulting idea of individualized diets for diabetic patients.

1889

•  Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering at the University of Strasbourg, France, remove the pancreas from a dog to determine the effect of an absent pancreas on digestion.

November 14, 1891

•  Frederick Banting is born near Alliston, Ontario, Canada.

February 28, 1899

•  Charles Best is born in West Pembroke, Maine.

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