History of Diabetes Mellitus treatment

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease whose main manifestation is hyperglycemia.

You can find more information about Diabetes Mellitus.

Antiquity
The first mention of this disease was recorded on papyrus from around 1552 BC. It was written here that it is a rare disease with an unknown cause, manifested by great thirst and frequent urination, when the patient urinates more than he drinks, the body therefore loses weight, it dissolves and leaves the body by urine till he dies. They used a mixture of sweet beer, wheat grains, sprouted corn grains and green cypress for the treatment. In the 2nd century BC, a disciple of Hippocrates, the Greek physician Aretaois of Cappadocia, described the symptoms of diabetes very well. He was also the first to use the name diabetes. In the 6th century, Indian physicians noticed a sweet taste in the urine of diabetics, but this discovery remained secret until 1674, when physician Thomas Willis introduced urine tasting into medical practice. He claimed that urine was as sweet as honey. Therefore, he added the adjective "mellitus", which is the Latin word for "honey".

19th century
In 1889, physicians Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski found out in experiments on dogs that symptoms of diabetes would appear after the pancreas. Their successor, scientist Edward Sharpey-Schafer, has shown that a substance that affects sugar metabolism is produced in the pancreas. In that time, children with diabetes had no hope of surviving, diabetes was considered as a deadly disease.

20th century
The revolution in the treatment took place in 1921, when Frederick Grant Banting, a physician, and his medical student, Charles Herbert Best, discovered a substance in the animal's pancreas that caused the dogs' blood sugar levels to drop. They called this substance insulin. The experiment was later repeated on a 13-year-old diabetic boy, Leonard Thompson, who became the first successfully treated diabetic in the world to survive another 13 years. Insulin then spread throughout the world, and did not reach Czechoslovakia until 1923.

History of glucometer development
The origin of the glucometer was recorded in the 20th century, when the American scientific duo Leland C. Clark and Champ Lyons came up with the idea of ​​using specific enzymatic reactions to determine blood glucose. And in the early 1960s, a biosensor design was introduced that was able to measure the concentration of glucose in a blood sample. Subsequently, the invention of test strips was introduced containing special reagents which, after the application of a drop of blood, trigger electrochemical reactions. The result is a signal that the device can explain as the blood glucose concentration. In the 1990s, there was a significant development of glucose biosensors, which determine the concentration of glucose between glucose and the enzymes glucose oxidase or glucose dehydrogenase. The devices became gradually faster and smaller and required an ever smaller size of applied blood drop.

Related articles

 * Diabetes Mellitus/type 2

Literature

 * ŠTECHOVÁ, Kateřina, et al. Technologie v diabetologii. 1.. vydání. Praha : Maxdorf s. r. o, 2016. 168 s.  ISBN 978-80-7345-479-1.
 * KOPECKÝ, Alois. Cukrovka dětí a mladistvých. 1.. vydání. Praha : Avicenum, 1986. 110 s. ISBN 08-019-86.