Diabetes Was 2,000 Years Ago

Diabetes was identified 2,000 years ago by Aretaeus of Cappadocia, the Greek physician. Little progress was made in understanding or treating the disease until 1869 when Paul Langer-hans described small islands (islets) in the pancreas.

However, he did not know their function in regulating blood-sugar levels. In 1889, German scientist Oskar Minkowski discovered a critical link between the pancreas and diabetes when he removed a dog's pancreas and observed that it caused the dog to urinate frequently. He also found sugar in the dog's urine.

In 1909, the Belgian scientist Jean de Meyer used the term "insulin" to describe a hypothetical substance in the pancreas that controls blood sugar, even though insulin had not yet been discovered. Finally in 1921, after a series of experiments, J.J.R. Macleod,
 
Charles Best, Frederick Banting, and James Collip succeeded in purifying insulin and successfully treating a diabetes patient with it.

This discovery saved many people from dying in a coma due to high blood sugars. Although diabetes has been around a long time, we still need new and better therapies.