The History of Diabetes

Where did diabetes originate?

• Diabetes has been around since 1500 BC and is recorded in the early medical writings.
• Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician from the time of 200 A.D. initially called the disease diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, which also means to “flow,” referring to the flow through the urine. The Latin word mellitus was then added to the name, meaning “honey”, to imply the existence of sugar in the urine.
• The sweet taste of urine was noticed by the Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Indians and Persians.
• In the medieval time of Persia, in “The Canon of Medicine”, it was written diabetes mellitus “describing the abnormal appetite and the collapse of sexual functions and documented the sweet taste of diabetic urine”.
• Indians use to test for diabetes to see whether or not the ants were attracted to the individual’s urine.
• In the late 1800’s that German physician by the name of Paul Langerhans found the part in the pancreas that later was discovered to be the place where insulin is formed, collected and then released.
• In 1921 researchers made advancement in diabetes research when they removed some of the fluid that came from the cells of the pancreas, that now we know as insulin. In 1923, Dr. Grant Banting was given the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the breakthrough.
• In 1974, the National Diabetes Commission was created to evaluate the impact of diabetes.