A Different Take on History Class...

History teaches everything including the future. ~ Lamartine

         While I created this blog out of a desire to share more information about life with Type 1 diabetes, I realized there are even fewer discussions about the progression that has been made in treatments and the history of diabetes in general.  My long train ride home from school turned out being a perfect research opportunity.

         Ancient carvings indicate diabetes has been around since 1500 B.C., and the term "diabetes" was coined by Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, in 200 A.D.  It was called diabetes mellitus, which means “flow,” referring to the flow through the urine, and “honey”, to imply the existence of sugar in the urine.  Indian physicians would see if ants were attracted to a person's urine as a method of diagnosis.  

        Flash forward to the late 1800’s, German physician Paul Langerhans found the part in the pancreas that later was discovered to be the place where insulin is formed, collected and then released.  

        Then in 1921 Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best kept a severely diabetic dog alive for 70 days by injecting it with a murky concoction of canine pancreas extract. With the help of Dr. Collip and Dr. Macleod, Banting and Best administered a more refined extract of insulin to Leonard Thompson, a young boy dying of diabetes. Within 24 hours, Leonard's dangerously high blood sugars had dropped to near normal levels. Until the discovery of insulin, most children diagnosed with diabetes were expected to live less than a year. In a matter of 24 hours the boy's life was changed forever. News of this new creation, insulin, spread across the world.

Frederick Banting with his invention of insulin

         In 1935 Roger Hinsworth discovered there were two types of diabetes: "insulin sensitive" (type I) and "insulin insensitive" (type II). By differentiating between the two types of diabetes, Hinsworth helped open up new avenues of treatment.

         In the 1960s urine strips were developed. Dorothy Frank, who has had type I diabetes since 1929, remembers, "In order to test your blood sugars there were these do-it-yourself urine kits. Blue meant there was no sugar present, and orange meant you were positive." With the invention of urine strips, patients were able to gain greater control over their management routines.  

          Becton-Dickinson introduced the single use syringe in 1961. This greatly reduced the amount of pain from injections as well as the time-consuming ritual of boiling needles and glass syringes. Diabetes Health board member Dr. Nancy Bohannon describes the early syringes as: "The needles were enormous, and they came with little pumice stones so that you could sharpen them. They often became dull and developed barbs on the end. And in order to sterilize them they had to be boiled for twenty minutes."

          The progress that has been made in diabetes management and treatment options over the last century alone has been incredible.  While receiving my diagnosis when I did was difficult, I had so many resources and options available to me that made the news much easier than it must have been for patients years ago.  I recently saw The Social Network again, and was reminded of how far technology has come.  Mark Zuckerberg's quest to create a whole new world which has never existed before is similar to the journey many scientists and doctors took and continue to take in efforts to ease the lives of those affected by diabetes.  Technological innovations have improved our lives so drastically, and its exciting to think about the improvements that will be discovered years to come.