Type 1 Diabetes

Claudius Galenus (born 131 A.D.) saw two patients and introduced two ideas: first, that diabetes is a weakness of the kidneys, which can not hold back water and also are thirsty for fluid; second, that the urine consists of the unchanged drink. Galen's great authority maintained these errors for about 1500 years, and retarded progress in the knowl edge of diabetes.

Chronological order here shifts the narrative to the Far East. According to Iwai, the first oriental description of diabetes was given in the year 200 by Tchang Tchong-king, perhaps the greatest of Chinese physicians. “There is a disease called ‘the disease of thirst,’ in which polyuria is the characteristic symptom. One may drink as much as ten liters per day, which is recovered in the urine.”

A Chinese medical work of about the year 600 classifies four supposed groups of cases, and notes the symptoms of polyphagia, polydipsia, and polyuria. Still a later work mentions furunculosis.

Trincavella (1476–1568), a Venetian, observed three cases of dia betes. In one, the etiology was attributed to persecution and grief. In another, the relatives are said to have demonstrated the truth of the Galenic doctrine that diabetic urine is the unchanged drink, by fre quently tasting the urine and finding the taste identical with what the patient had been drinking. Cantani suggests that the drink in this CaSe Was SWeet tea.

About the fifteenth century, diabetes was attributed to wine and high living. (I think in China)