olonging a patients life was the “ starvation diet “ believe it or not. We now know that diabetes starts in our pancreas, but that wasn’t the case about 130 years ago. In 1569, Paul Langerhans, a German medical student, made microscopic observations of tissue from the pancreas. He observed a clumping of the pancreas cells. Their clumps of cells were later named the islets of Langerhans in honor of his discovery. But when he later identified them no one had yet isolated the hormone insulin or even guessed at the role of these cells producing it. The linkage between diabetes and the pancreas was proven in 1889 by Oscar Minkowski and Joseph Strasburg in France. Von Mering was studying how the body observed fat. He suggested that if the pancreas wasn’t working right some fat being used poorly. Von Mering attempted to test his hypothesis by operating on a dog and tying off all the ducts leading from its pancreas. What he found out was pancreatic fluids still leaked out. Minkowski, offered to totally remove the dog’s pancreas. The two doctors when testing on the dog had no idea this had something to do with diabetes. Surgery was performed on the dog. The two doctors went away, while Von Merings assistant was to train the dog to urinate and defecate at specific times and locations. When Minkowski returned, he found that the animal was urinating all over the place. The assistant couldn’t explain why this was so. Minkowski collected some of the dog’s urine and tested for glucose. The results for glucose came back in high amounts. The experiment was put on several dogs, and the same thing happened. Minkowski and Von Mering realized they had a breaking discovery; there was evidence that diabetes was related to disturbances of the pancreas. The role of insulin with diabetes wasn’t discovered until about 30 years later. The breakthrough came in 1921, with the discovery of insulin. Dr. ...
