Diabetes

Diabetes has been around since 1500 B.C in ancient Egypt. The Egyptian physicians found the symptom polyuria, frequent urination. They treated the symptom by sticking to a strict diet of wheat grains, grapes, honey and berries. Diabetes was known also in ancient China, Japan and India. Susruta, a doctor in India around 400 B.C believed the disease made people produced honey. “ He noted that the urine of a person with diabetes attracts flies,” indicating that the urine was sweet.
In the Dark Ages most of the knowledge of diabetes was lost until the Renaissance period started to develop. Paracelsus, a Swiss physician, evaporated the urine of a person in the sixteenth-century and mistakenly thought it to be salt. In 1766 Matthew Dobson proved chemically that the sweetness of the urine was due to the presence of sugar. Doctors soon began to taste their patients’ urine to determine whether sugar was presented until early nineteenth-century.