Historical

The first actual description of diabetes dates back to 1500 years before Christianity when a pharaoh’s doctor noticed the accumulation of ants around the urine of some people rather than others. Hess Raa described it as a curable disease. It was then spoken of by Gallinious in Roman books. But the most accurate description of the disease and its complications appeared in a book, The Law in Medicine, by President Ibn Sina.

Treating diabetes by changing the diet is certainly the oldest form of therapy and has been practiced in Egypt since 1500 B.C. This was confirmed with Professor George Ebers discovery of a large ancient Egyptian Papyrus in Upper Egypt in Luxor. This papyrus contained an accurate description of diabetes and possible ways of treating it through diet.

The greatest advance in diabetes was the isolation of insulin by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921. This was followed in 1935 by Elliott Joslin’s book Goals of Appropriate Therapy for Diabetes.
The medical name for diabetes, diabetes mellitus, was derivedfrom words with Greek and Latin roots.

Diabetes was derived from a Greek word that means to siphon . The most obvious sign of diabetes is excessive urination. Water passes through the body of a person with diabetes as if it were being siphoned from the mouth through the urinary system out of the body.

Mellitus was derived from a Latin word that means sweet like honey. The urine of a person with diabetes contains extra sugar (glucose). In 1679, a physician tasted the urine of a person with diabetes and described it as sweet like honey.