The History of Diabetes
The Origin of Diabetes
Aretaeus, a Greek physician from Cappadocia who practiced in Rome and Alexandria, led a revival of Hippocrates’ teachings. He is thought to have ranked second only to the father of medicine himself in the application of keen observation and ethics to the art. In principle he adhered to the pneumatic school of medicine, which believed that health was maintained by “vital air,” or pneuma. Pneumatists felt that an imbalance of the four humors—blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile)—disturbed the pneuma, a condition indicated by an abnormal pulse. In practice, however, Aretaeus was an eclectic physician, since he utilized the methods of several different schools.
After his death he was entirely forgotten until 1554, when two of his manuscripts, On the Causes and Indications of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.) and On the Treatment of Acute and Chronic Diseases (4 vol.), both written in the Ionic Greek dialect, were discovered. These works not only include model descriptions of pleurisy, diphtheria, tetanus, pneumonia, asthma, and epilepsy but also show that he was the first to distinguish between spinal and cerebral paralyses. (He gave diabetes its name (from the Greek word for “siphon,” indicative of the diabetic’s intense thirst and excessive emission of fluids) and rendered the earliest clear account of that disease now known.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Birth Of Insulin
With that achievement, Macleod, who had been initially unenthusiastic about the work, assigned his entire laboratory to the insulin project. He also enlisted the Eli Lilly Company to aid in the large scale, commercial preparation of insulin although the University of Toronto received the patent for insulin production. By 1923, insulin was available in quantities adequate for relatively widespread treatment of diabetes. Although the success of the insulin project was remarkable, the rewards for the research workers were, it seems, quite controversial. The 1923 Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Banting and Macleod. Apparently, Banting was annoyed at the omission of Best and gave him half of his share of the prize. There was also, perhaps, the feeling that Macleod had done little in the initial stages of the work and was an undeserving recipient. Macleod split his share of the Prize with J. B. Collip who had made contributions to the later stages of the work on insulin purification.
After the spectacular events of 1921–1923, the University of Toronto established the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research separate from the University. Banting accomplished little during the rest of his career and died in a plane crash in 1940. Best, however, had a long successful tenure at the University of Toronto working on insulin and subsequently other important topics including the importance of dietary choline and the development of heparin as an anticoagulant.
Source: The Journal of Biological Chemistry
History Timeline
Here is a brief timetable about the documented history of diabetes.
1425 – The word diabete was first recorded in an English medical text, to cement the history of diabetes.
1675 – English physician Dr. Thomas Willis describes the sugar taste of urine in people with diabetes.
1750 – Cullen, a scientist, adds mellitus – Latin to mean “honey-sweet” to the term diabetes.
1869 – Paul Langerhans describes the islet cells of the pancreas.
1900 – Based on animal research, Drs. Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski discovered that the pancreas plays a role in diabetes.
1901 – Eugene Opie links diabetes with islet cells, which are clusters of cells in the pancreas that make insulin. Not yet understanding it but this is will best help type one diabetes patients.
1920 – R.D. Lawrence develops the dietary exchange system which helped to develop a diet for diabetes.
1921 – Frederick Banting and Charles Best discover insulin as a diabetes medication.
1922-1923 – Frederick G Banting of Canada and John J.R. Macleod of the United Kingdom win the Nobel Prize for their discovery of insulin, after using it in the first patients for diabetes treatment to go down in the history of diabetes.
1936 – Sir Harold Percival Himsworth distinguished diabetes type 1 and 2.
1936 – PZI (Protamine Zinc Insulin) veterinary insulin used on animals is a combination of pork/beef derived insulin or beef-derived insulin.
1936 – NPH (Neutral Protamine Hagedorn) was created by adding neutral protamine to regular insulin.
1942 – The first sulfonylurea is identified as an anti-diabetic drug to help manage type 2 diabetes.
1952 – Lente insulin was created using zinc – a natural component of the body to obtain the best effects without the use of protamine.
1956 – Oral medications of sulfonylurea were developed for people with type 2 diabetes.
1961 – Becton-Dickinson markets a single use syringe treatments for diabetes.
1969 – Ames Diagnostics creates the first portable blood glucose meter to help monitor the different types of diabetes.
1977 – The radioimmunoassay for insulin is discovered by Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson.
1979 – The hemoglobin A1C test is created for the precise measurement of blood sugar control.
1979 – The Derma-Ject needle-free insulin delivery system is marketed by The Derata Corporation.
1988 – Dr. Gerald Reaven identifies metabolic syndrome, which is a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of a diabetes diagnosis.
1992 – Lispro is tested, by Eli Lilly, as a diabetes medication.
1993 – The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial concludes that the best diabetes management is “tight control.”
1995 – Precose and Metformin are approved for use to help with type 2 diabetes symptoms.
2007 – Diabetes patients are treated with stem cells from their own bone marrow and showed that most of the patients no longer required insulin treatments for extended periods of time.
