Apurva Atak

'Take care of your Body, its the only place you have got to live in..'- Jim Rohn

What does 'DIABETES' mean?

Diabetes refers to diabetes mellitus or, less often, to diabetes insipidus. Diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus share the name "diabetes" because they are both conditions characterized by excessive urination(polyuria). When "diabetes is used alone, it refers to diabetes mellitus.⁽³⁾

History

Nearly 5,000 years ago in India, the physician Susruta described a disease “brought on by gluttonous overindulgence in rice, flour, and sugar,” in which urine is “like elephant’s in quantity.”

A Greek physician, Aretaeus, in the first century A.D. gave us the name “diabetes” from the Greek word for “siphon”.Observing his patient’s extreme thirst, he reasoned that the body acts like a siphon, sucking in water at one end and discharging it at the other. ⁽⁴⁾⁽³⁾

In the 17^th century, Thomas Willis called attention to the sweetness of diabetic urine, and in 1776, Dr. Dobson of Liverpool identified this sweetness as that of sugar.⁽⁴⁾

In 1935 Roger Himsworth divided diabetes into two categories:

”insulin sensitive”(today’s Type 1) and “insulin insensitive”(the modern Type 2).

One day, the history of diabetes will end with the tale of how diabetes and its complications were cured for good.⁽⁴⁾