Type 2 Diabetes

Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) made no mention of any condition clearly recognizable as diabetes. A notion concerning the quantity of urine, in a passage translated by Richardson from the third book of the Epidemics,” is like that of Celsus, but the first known recognition of diabetes occurred at about the height of the Roman power. 

Aulus Cornelius Celsus (30 B.C.–50 A.D.) wrote as follows: 

“When urine, even in excess of the drink, and flowing forth without pain, causes emaciation and danger, if it is thin, exercise and massage are indicated, especially in the sun or before a fire; the bath should be infrequent, nor should one linger long in it; the food should be con stipating, the wine sour and unmixed, in summer cold, in winter luke warm; but everything in smallest possible quantity. The bowels also should be moved by enema, or purged with milk. If the urine is thick, both exercise and massage should be more vigorous; one should stay longer in the bath; the food should be light, the wine likewise. In each disease, all things should be avoided that are accustomed to increase urine.” 

In this compressed passage, Celsus gives the first description of diabetes, introduces an error (fluid output greater than intake) destined to endure eighteen centuries, and touches some modern treat ment. It is not known to what extent this knowledge was original with Celsus or handed down by predecessors. At any rate, the recog nition of the disease was so new that it had not yet received a name. 

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=NExNAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA3

Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD) was a Roman encyclopaedist, known for his extant medical work, De Medicina, which is believed to be the only surviving section of a much larger encyclopedia. The De Medicina is a primary source on diet, pharmacy, surgery and related fields, and it is one of the best sources concerning medical knowledge in the Roman world. The lost portions of his encyclopedia likely included volumes on agriculture, law, rhetoric, and military arts. He made contributions to the classification of human skin disorders in dermatology, such as Myrmecia, and his name is often occurring in medical terms about the skin, e.g., kerion celsi and area celsi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Cornelius_Celsus

The first low carbohydrate diets for diabetes, which were introduced in the 18th century, were not high fat diets so much as high protein diets. By the late nineteenth century a consensus had begun to appear in European studies that a higher fat and lower protein intake was more tolerable. Frederick Allen confirmed this in animal studies, but the diet he introduced into clinical practice in 1914 restricted fat, protein, and total calories, becoming in extreme cases a starvation diet with the deadly side effect of “inanition”. Interpreting Allen’s research in light of the studies in chemical metabolism of Rollin Woodyatt, Louis “Harry” Newburgh, with Phil Marsh, dared to increase fat in the diets of diabetic patients at the University of Michigan Hospital in 1918, with gratifying results which were published in 1920. A dispute followed between Newburgh and Allen’s disciple Elliott P Joslin; Woodyatt, Russell M Wilder, Karl Petren and others confirmed Newburgh’s results by experimentation and by 1924 Joslin too was reporting the higher fat diet’s ability to extend life in diabetics untreated with insulin. However, a dispute between Joslin and Newburgh about the long-term safety of the high fat diet continued long into the insulin era. Because the debate about the effect of the high-fat diet in the tabula rasa of the pre-insulin era only lasted a few years, and rigorous research into the question was largely limited to the state of Michigan, medical history has paid little attention to the fact that the question of what is the “optimum”, or default, diet for diabetes, based on physiological principles as well as clinical practice and experiment, was at one time almost settled. This historical review paper summarises the early clinical researches of Newburgh et al. into the effects of the high-fat diet in the treatment of diabetes, with a particular focus on events in Michigan between 1918 and 1930.