Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus means, literally, 'the sweet siphon'. Recognised since early Greek times, diabetes was classified together with other conditions which caused excessive urination, since this was all that was known about it. Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, was the first to call the condition diabetes, but mellitus, from the Greek word for honey, was added only in 1675 by an English doctor by the name of Thomas Willis.

Diabetes mellitus was known to cause sweet urine by doctors in antiquity, and methods of testing patients urine including tasting it were used. However, the sweet urine of diabetes mellitus was just a curiosity, since no treatment existed, and nothing was really known about the disease.

Research into the causes of diabetes mellitus began in earnest at around the beginning of the last century, and after German researchers discovered that the pancreas seemed to produce a substance that balanced blood sugar, the way was clear for the discovery of insulin. Two researchers working at the University of Toronto, Banting and Best, managed to isolate the hormone from pancreatic tissue in 1921. During the next few years insulin production became more sophisticated and spread to most of the civilised world, saving many lives and reducing suffering for many. Gradually insulin therapy developed and different forms of insulin were created, some short acting, some medium acting and some long acting. This meant that diabetics could finally live relatively normal lives. Today it seems unbelievable that diabetes mellitus type 1 was once an acute disease which ended in death for children and young adults.

Of course, the history of diabetes mellitus treatment was only just beginning. When Banting and Best revolutionised treatment with insulin, it was still unknown that diabetes mellitus was actually three different diseases. In the years following their work, the field of diabetes research became popular, and it was only a matter of time before type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes were discovered. As drugs were found to treat type 2 more effectively, more and more people benefitted. Today treatment methods for diabetes mellitus are cheap, widely available and effective, and research regularly yields better drugs. Although a definitive cure still eludes us, type 1, 2 and gestational diabetes mellitus can be controlled to the point that diabetes patients who actively participate in treatment can have the same risk of complications as non-diabetics.

Find out more about diabetes, its symptoms and treatments