Tag Archives: diabetes

Diseases

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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?

Diabetes circa 1800

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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.