Diabetes

Diabetes (from a Greek word signifying to flow through), a disease characterised by excessive secretion of urine. In diabetes insipidus no abnormal constituent is present in the urine secreted; in diabetes mellitus, however, a substance allied to grape sugar may be detected on examination of the urine. The former disease is very rare, and diabetes mellitus, or diabetes proper, will alone be further considered here. As regards the pathology of diabetes but little is known with certainty. The chief symptoms are increased appetite, uncontrollable thirst, wasting, dryness of skin, and the secretion of considerable quantities of urine, usually of high specific gravity and containing sugar. The disease in its most serious form is usually met with in young male adults; its progress in such subjects is apt to be rapid, and it generally proves fatal. Death is sometimes ushered in by coma (q.v.). Diabetes is not always an intractable disease; in middle-aged and elderly people particularly it often admits of considerable alleviation, if not of cure. The main form of treatment adopted is dietetic. All sugar-forming food is excluded from the patient's diet. He must rigidly abstain not only from sugar, but from starch, which is converted into sugar by the digestive juices.