Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![mere accidental occurrence of piarhaemia. Its apparent relation to albu- minuria seems to point to some organic change in the constitution of the plasma of the blood itself. 6. GLTJCOHiEMIA—The excretion of sugar by the kidney, consti- tuting a disease known as diabetes, or diabetes mellitus, or saccharine diabetes [diabetes, from Acd — through + ftaivco = to move; melihwia, from Mill — honey + uZpov — the urine; glucosuria, from rXuxbq = sweet; glucoli semia, from TXuxb^ -f «l« = blood] ; has attracted considerable at- tention since the time (about the year 1660) when Thomas Willis first observed the saccharine condition of the urine in this affection. More than a century later (1174) Matthew Dobson discovered, that the blood as wrell as the urine contains sugar in this disorder; from which he in- ferred that the saccharine matter is not formed in the kidneys, but only eliminated by them. Four 3'ears afterwards (1118), Cowdey succeeded in isolating the saccharine principle. John Rollo next taught (1796) that an animal diet lessens the amount of urine excreted, as well as the quan- tity of sugar. Then (1815) Chevreul learnt that the sugar differs from cane sugar, and resembles that of the grape; while ten years subsequently (1825) Tiedemann and Gmelin found that starch during its passage along the alimentary canal is transformed into sugar. Henceforth, the only justifiable opinion was to this effect: viz., that the sugar formed in the stomach and alimentary canal, from the starchy and saccharine elements of the food, instead of being converted into other compounds, was ab- sorbed and excreted b}T the kidneys. Dr. McGregor (1837) positively detected sugar in the serum of the blood, in the saliva, in the stools, and also in the vomited matters of diabetic patients. It necessarily followed that the treatment of diabetes consisted in allowing a diet free from sub- stances which could be converted into saccharine matter; and it is cer- tain that thus the general symptoms were frequently alleviated, while the amount of sugar which could be detected in the urine was usually con- siderably diminished. We now come to what may be appropriately called the physiological epoch in the history of diabetes. Just twenty-one years have elapsed since M. Claude Bernard asserted (in 1848) that animals, as well as vege- tables, possess a sugar-forming power. Previously it had been the universal belief, that all the sugar found in the system was derived from the starchy and saccharine elements of the food. But Bernard's elaborate researches on what he has called the glycogenic function of the liver, were destined to direct attention to a new field. This eminent physiolo- gist, while allowing that sugar could be formed during digestion, and that a certain portion might become absorbed, has yet further taught that this substance is a normal secretion of the liver. Thus, if a dog be fed for some time on a purely animal diet and then killed, the blood of the portal vein or that going to the liver will be found free from sugar; whereas the blood of the hepatic veins or that flowing from the gland, will be highly charged with it. He also proved that sugar may be formed in abnormal quantities by irritating the eighth pair of nerves at their origin in the fourth ventricle; while section of both these nerves suspends the sugar-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21079961_0048.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
