“What is Diabetes Mellitus?”
Definition: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease in which the pancreas is no longer able to produce enough insulin (Type 1) or cells stop responding to the insulin that is being produced (Type 2), so that glucose in the blood cannot be absorbed into the cells of the body. Symptoms often include frequent urination, lethargy, excessive thirst, and hunger. The treatment for this disease includes changes in diet, oral medications, and in some cases, daily injections of insulin.
Historical Background
Diabetes mellitus was first described in ancient Egypt. It was first named by Aretaeus in the 1st century A.D. In the 2nd century, Galenus blamed the cause of diabetes on, kidney weakness. There were several theories …show more content…
Eventually, Alkalis were added to the treatment regimen and soon after antimony, cathartics, and even opium were tried. In 1848, Claude Bernard found sugar in the hepatic veins of dogs that were fed either sugar or protein. After finding glycogen in the liver, he reported that the body could synthesize its own chemicals, and suggested that diabetes resulted from an overproduction of sugar by the liver. He also reported a renal threshold for glucose above which glycosuria resulted from. Towards the end of the 19th century, Bouchardat introduced exercise as an aide to carbohydrate restriction. Dr. Frederick Allen advocated the use of “undernutrition” and demonstrated that weight loss due to caloric restriction and without glycosuria was beneficial to the adult person with diabetes who is overweight; he claimed that those who abided by his treatment strategy would have longer lives. However, patients who lost a similar amount of weight but who still had glycosuria reportedly did worse and continued to have progressive systemic …show more content…
Oscar Minkowski noted that animals that had their pancreas removed became diabetic. In the summer of 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin. On January 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14 year old boy with diabetes, received the first extract of insulin. This opened a new era for treatment. In 1936, H. C. Hagedorn, discovered when protamine was added to the insulin mixture, there was a dramatic increase in the duration of action to about 24 hours and prolonged even further to 36 hours when zinc was