How Was Diabetes Treated In The 1800S?

Scientists and physicians have been documenting the condition now known as diabetes for thousands of years. From the origins of its discovery to the dramatic breakthroughs in its treatment, many brilliant minds have played a part in the fascinating history of diabetes.

1. Diabetes: Its Beginnings The first known mention of diabetes symptoms was in 1552 B.C., when Hesy-Ra, an Egyptian physician, documented frequent urination as a symptom of a mysterious disease that also caused emaciation.
2. Also around this time, ancient healers noted that ants seemed to be attracted to the urine of people who had this disease.

In 150 AD, the Greek physician Arateus described what we now call diabetes as “the melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.” From then on, physicians began to gain a better understanding about diabetes. Centuries later, people known as “water tasters” diagnosed diabetes by tasting the urine of people suspected to have it.

1. If urine tasted sweet, diabetes was diagnosed.
2. To acknowledge this feature, in 1675 the word “mellitus,” meaning honey, was added to the name “diabetes,” meaning siphon.
3. It wasn’t until the 1800s that scientists developed chemical tests to detect the presence of sugar in the urine,
4. Diabetes: Early Treatments As physicians learned more about diabetes, they began to understand how it could be managed.

The first diabetes treatment involved prescribed exercise, often horseback riding, which was thought to relieve excessive urination. In the 1700s and 1800s, physicians began to realize that dietary changes could help manage diabetes, and they advised their patients to do things like eat only the fat and meat of animals or consume large amounts of sugar.

During the Franco-Prussian War of the early 1870s, the French physician Apollinaire Bouchardat noted that his diabetic patients’ symptoms improved due to war-related food rationing, and he developed individualized diets as diabetes treatments, This led to the fad diets of the early 1900s, which included the “oat-cure,” “potato therapy,” and the “starvation diet.” In 1916, Boston scientist Elliott Joslin established himself as one of the world’s leading diabetes experts by creating the textbook The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus, which reported that a fasting diet combined with regular exercise could significantly reduce the risk of death in diabetes patients.

Today, doctors and diabetes educators still use these principles when teaching their patients about lifestyle changes for the management of diabetes. Diabetes: How Insulin Came About Despite these advances, before the discovery of insulin, diabetes inevitably led to premature death.

1. The first big breakthrough that eventually led to the use of insulin to treat diabetes was in 1889, when Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, researchers at the University of Strasbourg in France, showed that the removal of a dog’s pancreas could induce diabetes.
2. In the early 1900s, Georg Zuelzer, a German scientist, found that injecting pancreatic extract into patients could help control diabetes.

Frederick Banting, a physician in Ontario, Canada, first had the idea to use insulin to treat diabetes in 1920, and he and his colleagues began trying out his theory in animal experiments. Banting and his team finally used insulin to successfully treat a diabetic patient in 1922 and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine the following year.

How did they treat diabetes before insulin?

The History of a Wonderful Thing We Call Insulin Since the dawn of time, we have searched for ways to make life easier for us. The modern age has given us some amazing technological advances—what we would do without the internet, our iPhones or high-speed travel? For many people, surviving life without these things sounds rough.

1. However, if you have diabetes, no doubt you’re also a big fan of one particular 20 th -century discovery: insulin.
2. Before insulin was discovered in 1921, people with diabetes didn’t live for long; there wasn’t much doctors could do for them.
3. The most effective treatment was to put patients with diabetes on very strict diets with minimal carbohydrate intake.

This could buy patients a few extra years but couldn’t save them. Harsh diets (some prescribed as little as 450 calories a day!) sometimes even caused patients to die of starvation. So how did this wonderful breakthrough blossom? Let’s travel back a little more than 100 years ago.

In 1889, two German researchers, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, found that when the pancreas gland was removed from dogs, the animals developed symptoms of diabetes and died soon afterward. This led to the idea that the pancreas was the site where “pancreatic substances” (insulin) were produced.

Later experimenters narrowed this search to the islets of Langerhans (a fancy name for clusters of specialized cells in the pancreas). In 1910, Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Shafer suggested only one chemical was missing from the pancreas in people with diabetes.

He decided to call this chemical insulin, which comes for the Latin word insula, meaning “island.” So what happened next? Something truly miraculous. In 1921, a young surgeon named Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best figured out how to remove insulin from a dog’s pancreas. Skeptical colleagues said the stuff looked like “thick brown muck,” but little did they know this would lead to life and hope for millions of people with diabetes.

With this murky concoction, Banting and Best kept another dog with severe diabetes alive for 70 days—the dog died only when there was no more extract. With this success, the researchers, along with the help of colleagues J.B. Collip and John Macleod, went a step further.

A more refined and pure form of insulin was developed, this time from the pancreases of cattle. In January 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old boy dying from diabetes in a Toronto hospital, became the first person to receive an injection of insulin. Within 24 hours, Leonard’s dangerously high blood glucose levels dropped to near-normal levels.

The news about insulin spread around the world like wildfire. In 1923, Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which they shared with Best and Collip. Thank you, diabetes researchers! Soon after, the medical firm Eli Lilly started large-scale production of insulin.

It wasn’t long before there was enough insulin to supply the entire North American continent. In the decades to follow, manufacturers developed a variety of slower-acting insulins, the first introduced by Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in 1936. Insulin from cattle and pigs was used for many years to treat diabetes and saved millions of lives, but it wasn’t perfect, as it caused allergic reactions in many patients.

The first genetically engineered, synthetic “human” insulin was produced in 1978 using E. coli bacteria to produce the insulin. Eli Lilly went on in 1982 to sell the first commercially available biosynthetic human insulin under the brand name Humulin. Insulin now comes in many forms, from regular human insulin identical to what the body produces on its own, to ultra-rapid and ultra-long acting insulins.

1. Thanks to decades of research, people with diabetes can choose from a variety of formulas and ways to take their insulin based on their personal needs and lifestyles.
2. From Humalog to Novolog and insulin pens to pumps, insulin has come a long way.
3. It may not be a cure for diabetes, but it’s literally a life saver.

So, what’s next for insulin? Scientists aren’t sure (though they’re working hard on it!), but one thing is certain: insulin is a medical marvel in the world of diabetes. For more interesting information about insulin, we suggest reading by Michael Bliss.

How did they treat diabetes in the old days?

– The early Greek physicians recommended treating diabetes with exercise, if possible, on horseback. They believed that this activity would reduce the need for excessive urination. Other treatment options have included :

a “nonirritating” milk-and-carb diet, for example, milk with rice and starchy, gummy foods “to thicken the blood and supply salts” or milk and barley water boiled with breadpowders of fenugreek, lupin, and wormseednarcotics, such as opiumfoods that are “easy of digestion,” such as veal and muttonrancid animal foodtobaccogreen vegetablesa carb-free dietfasting

One doctor recommended a diet consisting of 65 percent fat, 32 percent protein, and 3 percent carbohydrate, However, he advised avoiding fruits and garden produce. Various experts have also recommended several chemicals and drugs, including ammonium sulfide, digitalis, magnesia, chalk, lithium salts, and potassium salts.

exercisingwearing warm clothingtaking baths, including cold baths and Turkish bathsavoiding stress wearing flannel or silk near the skingetting massages

These ways of managing diabetes did not prove particularly effective, and people with this condition experienced severe health problems.

How did they test for diabetes in the 1800s?

The History of Diabetes Testing Diabetes was recognized as far back as 1500 BC by Egyptian scientists. In 600 BC scientists later noted that ants seemed to be particularly drawn to the urine of people with diabetes. The earliest documented diagnosis of the disease was during the middle ages when Chinese, Indian and Egyptian scientists tested the urine of people thought to have diabetes by tasting it for a sweet distinctive taste.

• The first clinical exam for diabetes was performed by a doctor named Karl Tommer in 1841 who tested urine with acid hydrolysis which broke up the disaccharides into monosaccharides and then after the addition of other chemicals results in a reaction forming if sugar is present.
• In 1850 Hermann von Fehling was able to expand on Trommer’s work to quantify the results.

Later in the 19th century, Frederick Pavy developed tablets that when added to the urine would show if there was glucose in the urine. In 1907 Stanley Benedict was able to refine Fehling’s test. In 1913 Ivar Bang discovered a way to test the blood for glucose.

In the 1940’s urine test strips were developed that would change colors depending on the amount of glucose was in the urine. In more modern times, test strips were introduced in 1964 that could check the blood for sugar and the first glucometer that was able to test blood samples for elevated sugar was developed in 1970.

Another test for diabetes was developed in the mid 1970’s and it tested for hemoglobin A1c. Glucose testing has now progressed to the point where blood sugar can be determined by a sensor that can measure it through the skin, with no need to take a drop of blood.

All content of this newsletter is intended for general information purposes only and is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult a medical professional before adopting any of the suggestions on this page. You must never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking medical treatment based upon any content of this newsletter.

PROMPTLY CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN OR CALL 911 IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. : The History of Diabetes Testing

What is the 1800 rule for diabetics?

– Understanding your insulin sensitivity is important for maintaining your blood sugar. You can determine this using a mathematical formula. Apps can also help. This method only applies to decreasing your blood sugar when it’s already high. The reality is that there will be times when your blood sugar will be too high.

What is the forgotten method to cure diabetes?

From forgotten to unforgettable ​ – ” We ​ believe the full potential of millets for the consumer, planet and farmer can only be tapped if millets are restored to the plate as staples. If unprocessed or minimally processed millets diversify the commonly consumed staples or become staples themselves, we will be utilising millets to their fullest and make them “unforgotten ​”,” said Dr Seetha Anitha, the study’s lead author and a senior nutrition scientist at ICRISAT However, she added a new approach to target the whole millet value chain was needed.

” Consumers need to know how to cook them in ways that make their consumption appetising without losing health and nutritional benefits. the lack of knowledge of cooking millets contributes to making them forgotten ​,” she told NutraIngredients-Asia ​. Dr Anitha said simple cooking method such as boiling millets in water or making porridge will be more beneficial than deep frying and adding ingredients such as fats and oil.

In the current study, it was reported that all cooking methods raised GI value of the millets. Steaming, baking and boiling raised the GI of millets by up to 18.4 units, 16.3 units and 11.3 units, respectively. ” We hope our studies will provide the industry the much needed scientific case for using millets in ways that do not alter their nutritional profile.

Some such ways include making millet based products with high proportion of millets, mixing them with pulses, choosing the appropriate cooking method that preserves its nutritional value and keep them at low GI level ​. ” The scope to innovate them into foods is endless and in turn implies a big entrepreneurial potential ​.” Policies also influence the consumption of crops.

For instance, Kenya has mandated the mixing of maize flour with flour of forgotten grains like millets. India has also called for the inclusion of millets in its school feeding programme. This study is the first of a series of studies on millets which will include managing lipid profile, hypertension, obesity, reducing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, anemia, as well as its beneficial effect on calcium deficiencies and growth parameters.

1. Source: Frontiers in Nutrition
2. ​
3. “A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Potential of Millets for Managing and Reducing the Risk of Developing Diabetes Mellitus”
4. Authors: Seetha Anitha, et al.

: The forgotten staple to fight diabetes: Extensive study shows millet intake lowers blood glucose levels

Did they use to taste urine for diabetes?

Scientists and physicians have been documenting the condition now known as diabetes for thousands of years. From the origins of its discovery to the dramatic breakthroughs in its treatment, many brilliant minds have played a part in the fascinating history of diabetes.

• Diabetes: Its Beginnings The first known mention of diabetes symptoms was in 1552 B.C., when Hesy-Ra, an Egyptian physician, documented frequent urination as a symptom of a mysterious disease that also caused emaciation.
• Also around this time, ancient healers noted that ants seemed to be attracted to the urine of people who had this disease.

In 150 AD, the Greek physician Arateus described what we now call diabetes as “the melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.” From then on, physicians began to gain a better understanding about diabetes. Centuries later, people known as “water tasters” diagnosed diabetes by tasting the urine of people suspected to have it.

If urine tasted sweet, diabetes was diagnosed. To acknowledge this feature, in 1675 the word “mellitus,” meaning honey, was added to the name “diabetes,” meaning siphon. It wasn’t until the 1800s that scientists developed chemical tests to detect the presence of sugar in the urine, Diabetes: Early Treatments As physicians learned more about diabetes, they began to understand how it could be managed.

The first diabetes treatment involved prescribed exercise, often horseback riding, which was thought to relieve excessive urination. In the 1700s and 1800s, physicians began to realize that dietary changes could help manage diabetes, and they advised their patients to do things like eat only the fat and meat of animals or consume large amounts of sugar.

• During the Franco-Prussian War of the early 1870s, the French physician Apollinaire Bouchardat noted that his diabetic patients’ symptoms improved due to war-related food rationing, and he developed individualized diets as diabetes treatments,
• This led to the fad diets of the early 1900s, which included the “oat-cure,” “potato therapy,” and the “starvation diet.” In 1916, Boston scientist Elliott Joslin established himself as one of the world’s leading diabetes experts by creating the textbook The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus, which reported that a fasting diet combined with regular exercise could significantly reduce the risk of death in diabetes patients.

Today, doctors and diabetes educators still use these principles when teaching their patients about lifestyle changes for the management of diabetes. Diabetes: How Insulin Came About Despite these advances, before the discovery of insulin, diabetes inevitably led to premature death.

The first big breakthrough that eventually led to the use of insulin to treat diabetes was in 1889, when Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, researchers at the University of Strasbourg in France, showed that the removal of a dog’s pancreas could induce diabetes. In the early 1900s, Georg Zuelzer, a German scientist, found that injecting pancreatic extract into patients could help control diabetes.

Frederick Banting, a physician in Ontario, Canada, first had the idea to use insulin to treat diabetes in 1920, and he and his colleagues began trying out his theory in animal experiments. Banting and his team finally used insulin to successfully treat a diabetic patient in 1922 and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine the following year.

What is the 15 minute rule for diabetics?

After You Have Low Blood Sugar – If your low blood sugar was mild (between 55-69 mg/dL), you can return to your normal activities once your blood sugar is back in its target range. After you have low blood sugar, your early symptoms for low blood sugar are less noticeable for 48 to 72 hours.

Be sure to check your blood sugar more often to keep it from getting too low again, especially before eating, physical activity, or driving a car. If you used glucagon because of a severe low (54 mg/dL or below), immediately call your doctor for emergency medical treatment. If you have had lows several times close together (even if they’re not severe), you should also tell you doctor.

They may want to change your diabetes plan.

Can diabetics live a long life?

Life expectancy can be increased by 3 years or in some cases as much as 10 years. At age 50, life expectancy- the number of years a person is expected to live- is 6 years shorter for people with type 2 diabetes than for people without it. People with type 2 diabetes can reduce their risk of complications and live longer by achieving their treatment goals.

Who is the oldest person to live with type 1 diabetes?

World’s Longest Living Person With Type 1 Who doesn’t like an inspiring story at this time of year? Today’s uplifting news comes out of New Zealand, the place that Winsome Johnston, the world’s longest living person with, calls home. Ms. Johnston, who has had Type 1 for 78 years, was diagnosed when she was just six years old.

Told that she wouldn’t live very long and would never have children, Ms. Johnston is now 84 and has four children, eight grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren, with another on the way. Rab Burton, who is Ms. Johnston’s diabetes nurse, says that she has never missed an appointment in eight years.

“She followed everything to the book. I think that’s her secret,” he says. To learn more about Winsome Johnston, check out in New Zealand. And to read more about others who have successfully lived with their diabetes for 50 years or more, see this page on the,

How can diabetes be cured permanently?

Although there’s no cure for type 2 diabetes, studies show it’s possible for some people to reverse it. Through diet changes and weight loss, you may be able to reach and hold normal blood sugar levels without medication, This doesn’t mean you’re completely cured.

• Type 2 diabetes is an ongoing disease.
• Even if you’re in remission, which means you aren’t taking medication and your blood sugar levels stay in a healthy range, there’s always a chance that symptoms will return.
• But it’s possible for some people to go years without trouble controlling their glucose and the health concerns that come with diabetes.

So how can you reverse diabetes ? The key seems to be weight loss. Not only can shedding pounds help you manage your diabetes, sometimes losing enough weight could help you live diabetes-free – especially if you’ve only had the disease for a few years and haven’t needed insulin.

How was diabetes treated in the 1900s?

Skip to content Photospin.com by Toh Kheng Ho by Sarah Pittman Ever since the discovery of diabetes clinicians knew that what you ate had a direct correlation to the progression of the disease. In the early 1900’s the only treatment for diabetes were specific diets that included the oat-cure, the milk diet, the rice cure, and overfeeding to counterbalance for the loss of fluids and weight.

But with no real medicinal treatment, the average life expectancy for a 10 year old with diabetes was 1 year. “Diagnosis at age 30 carries a life expectancy of about 4 years. A newly diagnosed 50-year-old might live 8 more years” (Swidorski, 2014). Diabetic researchers in the 1920’s realized that the pancreatic enzymes seemed to help patients that were in a diabetic coma.

But it wasn’t until the 1940’s that an injection for diabetic patients was the main way to control blood glucose levels. In 1959 the discovery of Type 1 vs Type 2 diabetes was discovered; this lead to clinicians being able to treat an individual more specifically according to their diagnosis.

1. As time goes on insulin pumps are developed, HbA1c is introduced and external insulin pumps start to be used as a main treatment for the disease.
2. So how have the rates of diabetes changed over time? Although there is minimal data on how many people accurately had diabetes in the early 1900’s, the reported death rate from diabetes for children under age 15 was 3.1/100,000/year in 1920.

Today it is estimated that about 193,000 Americans under age 20 have diabetes. Currently, the American population is 323.1 million, with 30.3 million Americans having diabetes according to The American Diabetes Association; with 84.1 million Americans over age 18 having pre-diabetes.

• References: “November: American Diabetes Month.” healthfinder.gov, Oct.2017, https://healthfinder.gov/NHO/NovemberToolkit.aspx Accessed 28 Oct.2017 Swidorski, Dawn.
• Diabetes History.” Defeatdiabetes.org, 22 Jan.2014.
• Https://www.defeatdiabetes.org/diabetes-history/ Accessed 28 Oct.2017.
• Overall Numbers, Diabetes and Prediabetes.” 19 July 2017.

http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/ Accessed 28 Oct.2017. “U.S Population (Live).” Worldometers.com, Oct 2017. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ Gale, Edwin A.M. “The Rise of Childhood Type 1 Diabetes in the 20 th Century.” American Diabetes Association, vol.51, issue 12.

How was diabetes treated in the 1960s?

– In the 1960s, diabetes management improved significantly. The development of urine strips made detecting sugar easier and simplified the process of managing blood sugar levels, the Mayo Clinic reports, Introduction of the single-use syringe allowed for faster and easier insulin therapy options.

How did Hippocrates treat diabetes?

Historical Diabetes Remedies WRITTEN BY: Forester McClatchey 2016-12-22 Before the in 1922 and its subsequent commercial release in 1923, type 1 diabetes would kill you. It still can, but until 94 years ago, it absolutely would. The lives of people with diabetes before 1922 are grim to think about, but they deserve more than an acknowledgment of their tragedy.

I think it’s worth exploring what they went through, and how various healers tried to help them. Ancient descriptions of diabetes are dire. The second century Greek physician Galen of Pergamon referred to it as “the thirsty disease.” The Greek word for diabetes, diabainein, means “siphon,” but can be translated as “to stand with legs apart,” suggesting the (male) posture of urination.

As you might guess, excessive urination was the first thing the ancients noticed in patients with diabetes. Aretaeus of Cappadocia described diabetes as “the melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.” He meant this fairly literally. To remove all ambiguity, Aretaeus also said, “life (with diabetes) is short, disgusting and painful.” Aretaeus was right.

Dying from diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) seems like one of those experiences engineered to maximize and prolong suffering. If we imagine a hypothetical ancient person with type 1 diabetes, we know he could expect to die like this: as his blood began to sweeten, the first symptoms would include extreme thirst, vomiting and of course, excessive urination.

The flesh and limbs would begin to “melt down.” He’d lose weight. He would then begin panting and gasping, which would accelerate the fatal dehydration. Anyone taking care of him would smell the sweetness on his breath. In the final stages of DKA, he would begin passing out and perhaps begin vomiting what the medical literature delicately terms “altered blood.” The less sanitized name for this phenomenon is “coffee ground vomiting.” I’ll spare you an explanation; the name is enough.

1. Soon his organs would fail, and so would he.
2. I just asked my brother, a medical researcher, to help me summarize this process in layman’s terms.
3. He suggested, “Your blood turns to poison and you die.”) Although diabetes was considered rare in the premodern world, it was deadly enough to be noteworthy, and many physicians wanted to know how to treat it.

According to the Ebers Papyrus (discovered in 1872), ancient Egypt had several ideas about how to attend to the mysterious sweet-urine disease. The papyrus tells us that Egyptian remedies included: “A measuring glass filled with water from the bird pond, elderberry, fibers of the asit plant, fresh milk, beer-swill, flower of the cucumber and green dates.” This prescription leaves one wondering what kind of birds populated the pond, and why their water would make anything in the human body feel better.

1. The rest of the ingredients (excluding “Beer-Swill”) sound vaguely delicious, but their carbohydrates would only make things worse for the patient with diabetes.
2. This wouldn’t be the last time physicians made such a mistake—an 18th century Frenchman named Pierre Priorry reasoned that people with diabetes ought to replace the sugar they lost in their urine by eating large quantities of sweet stuff.

We can only imagine how this went.) More helpfully, the famous 5th century BCE Greek physician Hippocrates (yes, from the oath) figured out that a low-starch diet and vigorous exercise could extend the lives of patients with diabetes. He also was among the first to suggest that there were two or more types of diabetes.

1. But remember Aretaeus, the guy who said diabetic life was “short, disgusting and painful?” He was Hippocrates’ student, so we can infer that despite Hippocrates’ discovery, the prognosis for people with type 1 diabetes in ancient Greece was still pretty grim.
2. Avicenna, the 11th century Persian polymath, was among the first to have any success treating diabetes medicinally.

In his 1025 encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine, he prescribed for people with diabetes an herbaceous blend of lupine (a legume with edible peas and gaudy flower spikes), fenugreek (a small herb with pungent yellow seeds) and zedoaria (a wetland crop whose roots taste like ginger with a bitter aftertaste).

All together, these herbs made more than an aesthetically formidable bouquet: they worked! At least a little. People with diabetes who consumed this blend would excrete less sugar, and their symptoms would grow less severe. It’s likely that fenugreek was the most helpful ingredient; recent studies have suggested (but not proven) that its yellow seeds can stimulate insulin production in both people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

In any case, Avicenna could buy his patients a little time. Apollinaire Bouchardat (1806-1886), noteworthy for more than his name, was perhaps the first physician in the pre-insulin era to score a genuine success in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. During the Franco-Prussian war, he noticed that when rations got desperately low, starving soldiers produced very little glucose in their urine.

He applied this observation to his patients with diabetes. It turned out that a starvation diet could prolong the lives of people with diabetes (if they could withstand, you know, the starving). Exercise, herbs and starvation: these could feebly push back the threshold of the diabetic’s death. The entire edifice of medical history had nothing else to offer until 1922.

Every diagnosis meant a person would melt away. Each time you spill a few droplets of insulin and smell its sour alcohol scent, remember that it isn’t fenugreek, that you may eat (almost) whatever you want, and that you will survive. Though they couldn’t fix diabetes, be grateful to Avicenna, Hippocrates, all of them.