Category Archives: diabetes

Diseases

Posted on by

I am fascinated by the diseases that have stalked humans since they began walking on two legs and have blogged about some of these pathogens. TB: scarring on the fossilized bones of ancient bovines, diabetes: described in Egyptian and Greek writings, polio: pictured on ancient Egyptian stele. My point is that many of these diseases have been with us for a long time until better sanitation and vaccines pushed them back.

Cancer, a disease that seems to be a scourge during modern times, and a disease that still resists easy treatment, has probably also been with us for millennia. Well, many cancers probably escaped detection since they were inside the body and not visible unless an autopsy was performed. (The history of autopsies is a whole other fascinating topic since they have been permitted, or not, depending on the culture.) Breast cancer is the exception since it is visible. Evidence of breast cancer dates back 4200 years to ancient Egypt. Remains from that period display classic symptoms of the disease. For thousands of years, there was no treatment but cauterization and/or mastectomy. If the discovery of the remains is any indication, these treatments were not successful ones.

What about the so-called lifestyle diseases? Type II diabetes is one and, I suspect, present even in ancient times. Present perhaps, but not prevalent, as most people struggled to find enough to eat.

We know that apoplexy was present, and probably high blood pressure. But what about cholesterol? Although mitigated by exercise, it is not a cure. The effects of cholesterol is a fairly recent discovery.

Why do so many people now seem to develop these ‘lifestyle’ diseases? We all live longer. In Rees’s time, the average life span was in the forties. (This is skewed by maternal deaths during childbirth.) There were always people who lived longer, to the sixties and seventies. And sometimes much longer. The risk factors for developing choldesterol, hypertension, heart disease and so on increase with age.

With increased lifespans comes increased risk for disease. It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?

Sugar, Molasses and Rum

Posted on by

Before rum, there was sugar – from sugarcane. Sugar is present in many fruits and vegetables. Sugar beets, for example, have more sugar than an apple. There are also many types of sugar: glucose, fructose, lactose, with slight differences in their chemical structures. 

The sweetest of all is sugarcane.

Sugarcane is a picky plant, requiring heat, sunshine and water. It must be grown in a frost free environment. Discovered millennia ago, it grew first in New Guinea and from there spread to India and the Indian subcontinent. It did not reach Europe until many centuries later, during the Middle Ages, and it was rare and expensive. A description of a banquet in 1457 mentions sugar sculptures. As sugar was planted in Madeira and the Canary Islands, the demand for sugar increased tenfold.

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World and the first sugar plantation was set up in Hispaniola. Slaves were imported to work the plantations and the desire for sugar continued to increase. With the plantations in the West Indies, sugar became cheap enough for most households to afford. From a few pounds consumed per capita in the colonies in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the amount rose to eighty pounds by the end.

Sugarcane is a grass. The crop is chopped into lengths, crushed and boiled. (Now much of this is done by machines but during the time of Will Rees, it was all done by hand.) The sugar we know and love is the crystallized result from the sugarcane syrup. Raw sugar is brown and has a higher molasses content. Slave accounts allude to the difficult and dangerous work connected to the production of sugar, from the chopping of cane to the boiling of the syrup. Slaves in the more northern states did not want to be sold down south: to the cotton or cane fields.

Molasses is a byproduct of this process. Once, it was discarded but the demand for molasses grew exponentially when it was discovered it could be fermented into an alcoholic drink. The fermentation of sugarcane juice is mentioned in Sanskrit texts. By the time of the sugar plantations in the West Indies, the enslaved were fermenting the molasses into ‘Rumbullion”, ‘kill-devil,’ and ‘screech’ – all forms of (probably undrinkable) rum. It rapidly gained in popularity, however, and was used as currency in Africa and was exported to Great Britain.

Sugarcane is a heavy feeder and requires about 660 gallons of water for every 2.2 pounds of sugar. So, not great for the environment as well as its role in obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, and other health risks.

Diabetes circa 1800

Posted on by

As Rees investigates murders, he invariably meets people who are ill. Illness and death was a constant companion. Illnesses: measles, mumps, diphtheria carried off infants and children; about one in five. Tuberculosis was epidemic. Women succumbed to childbirth. Simple accidents caused death, if not by the accident itself by sepsis.

Diseases we think of as modern, such as cancer or diabetes were present but not identified by name.

How do we know diabetes existed. About 3000 years ago the Egyptians described an illness with excessive thirst, urination and weight loss, the symptoms of Type I diabetes. In India they discovered they could use ants to detect the disease because the ants were drawn to the sweetness. And the Greeks called the disease diabetes mellitus ; diabetes for siphon or pass through and mellitus for sweet.

Early treatments included a diet of whole grains, milk and starchy foods, rancid animal meat, veal and mutton, green vegetables. Other treatments recommended exercising, reducing stress, wearing flannel – seriously. As one might expect, the true causes of Diabetes and possible treatments were not identified until modern times. In 1889, Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski found that removing the pancreas from dogs led them to develop diabetes. In 1910 Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer named the missing chemical, without which the body could not survive, insulin. That means island because the cells in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas produce it.

The first human subject took an insulin injection in 1922. So, although this illness has been with us a long time, its identification and the treatment is recent.

Why am I so interested in diabetes? Read Simply Dead and find out.