Getting completely historical

I know what you're thinking. Rob, you mentioned the history of diabetes in your first post. Is there really all that much history? Well, dear reader, there's at least enough for a blog post or two. 😉

The first documentation of diabetes was made in 1552 B.C. A piece of papyrus from the 3rd Egyptian Dynasty, written by a physician named Hesy-Ra, mentions the symptom of polyuria, AKA frequent urination. (You might want to remember that one, as polyuria plays a major role in the life of a diabetic.) The cause of the illness was unknown, but that didn’t stop Hesy-Ra from attempting treatment. He prescribed a special diet of fruits, grains, and honey. The patients probably died shortly thereafter because there was so much sugar in their blood that it flowed like tree sap. And while I'm making a joke about his treatment, my reading indicates that this diet actually helped, although I have absolutely NO idea how. It's completely counterproductive to what I know about diabetes. That many carbs and sugars should have had diabetics dying by the cartload.

In or around 1500 B.C., healers began to notice that ants were attracted to the urine of those who were diagnosed with diabetes. With our current knowledge, we understand this as the ants being attracted to the excessive sugar in the liquid waste.

The next time diabetes received any recognition was in or around 150 A.D. A Greek physician, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, inappropriately described the disease as the melting of the body into urine. His notes, translated by Francis Adams in 1856, say the following.  “Diabetes is a dreadful affliction, not very frequent among men, being a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine. The patients never stop making water and the flow is incessant, like the opening of the aqueducts. Life is short, unpleasant and painful, thirst unquenchable, drinking excessive and disproportionate to the large quantity of urine, for yet more urine is passed. If for a while they abstain from drinking, their mouths become parched and their bodies dry; the viscera seem scorched up, the patients are affected by nausea, restlessness and a burning thirst, and within a short time they expire.” ("Making water," by the way, was their way of saying "peeing.") Factually, in terms of the flesh and limbs melting down into urine, he was completely off the mark, but it’s not as though he had an electron microscope with which to study slides of urine samples. If he did, he would have noted a distinct lack of material that was the patient's supposedly “melting body.” Still, Aretaeus was accurate in his description of the symptoms. Because it seemed as though the human body was acting as a siphon, he gave the disease the first part of its name, “diabetes.” 

NOTE: There is conflicting information on this, but I only found one note giving credit to Apollonius of Memphis, Egypt, in the naming of the disease in 250 B.C. All others seem to credit Aretaeus.

Yet another error in diagnosis occurred in 164 A.D., when another Greek, Galen of Pergamum, mistakenly diagnosed diabetes as a disease of the kidneys. As per what translation I could find, “Diabetes is a genuine kidney disease, analogous to voracious appetite.” Let's face it. It was the most logical guess to be made, since polyuria is THE big symptom of diabetes. SPOLIER WARNING: I know you want to wait to see how it ends on your own, but it turns out diabetes is a pancreatic illness. (Yeah, I'm sure I ruined the whole story.)

Assuming the wrong organ was behind the illness is only one of many wrong, unusual, or downright weird ideas pertaining to diabetes mellitus. Try this one on for size: To relieve the problem of frequent urination, it was suggested around 1000 A.D. that patients take up horseback riding. I... I just... I mean... Just imagine your bladder nearly full to bursting and some lunatic suggests you go bouncing around on the back of a horse! I can't find anything about the success of this "treatment," but I'm going to assume there were a lot of pee-covered horses.

There seems to be some confusion as to exactly when “mellitus,” the Ancient Greek word for “honey,” was added to the disease’s name. Some sources say it occurred as early as the 11th century, while others specifically credit Thomas Willis for it in 1675. A number of my sources said outright, “We don’t really know who added it.” This reference to honey was because those with diabetes had very sweet urine. If you’re anything like me, you have to wonder how anyone would even know that. Well, one of the ways to test for diabetes was to have a “water tester” come in and give the urine a taste. (And you thought your job sucked!) As disgusting as this may seem, urine is sterile when it leaves the body... for the most part. Okay, not always, but... We're getting off track! 

Those who were diagnosed with diabetes, “sweet urine,” “honey urine,” or one of several other monikers it carried at the time, were almost immediately written off as terminal. Their deaths would be excruciating, but relatively short. 

And if you really must know in order to shake off the idea of "water testers," Francis Home of Edinburgh in the U.K. developed a chemical test to measure sugar in urine in the 19th century.

In 1685, the sloppy work of Swiss doctor Johann Conrad Brunner dictated that the pancreas wasn’t essential to live. Ooooops! What he had done was extract the pancreases of dogs, and then sat back to see what happened. His initial expectations were that the dogs would die. Instead, they experienced polydipsia (excessive thirst) and polyuria, but these symptoms later regressed. Because the animals lived, he made his medical declaration that the pancreas wasn’t all that important.

BIG goof! His error was uncovered 200 years later, when it was found that the smallest remnants of pancreatic tissue would suffice to provide the body with insulin. Dr. Brunner failed to remove every remnant of the organ, thereby skewing his results.

Then came the brilliance of French physician, Priorry, in the late 1850's. For the life of me, I can’t find the reason why, but he advised his diabetic patients to intake copious amounts of sugar as a treatment. I can only imagine that his medical practice took a serious dive, as he didn’t have many living patients to pay their bills after such a recommendation. It was reported he had to get a newspaper route to help pay for his medical malpractice insurance.

Okay, that last sentence may not be factual. 😜 

There's more to the story, but I'm guessing this post is long enough. You may not get this one right now, but I assure you that the Banting and the Best is yet to come!