On the relation between diabetes and food and its application to the treatment of the disease / by Arthur Scott Donkin.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation between diabetes and food and its application to the treatment of the disease / by Arthur Scott Donkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    important classes of alimentary substances con- tained in the ordinary human food of civilised life is completely cut off from the system. The cases just referred to, and those recorded by Dr. Parkes, Traube, and others, iu which; after the lapse of a certain time, diabetic sugar began to be formed out of the albuminous compounds of the food, together with other facts, lead to the conclusion that the period during which there is mal-assimilation of amylaceous substances onlij constitutes the first stage of the disease. The conversion of the amylaceous compounds of food into diabetic sugar not only deprives the body of the use of these for its healthy nutrition, and poisons the blood with an unoxidisable noxious substance, but in addition, it appears that their mal-assimilation both originates, or determines and intensifies, the saccharine meta- moriDhosis of the oleaginous and the albuminous. In short, starch and sugar appear to be the fuel by which the disease is fed, until it acquires a degree of intensity enabling it to attack and mis- appropriate these latter substances. A case recorded by Dr. Pavy ^ (though not for » C]}. cit. p. 241.