CHAPTER XI 



PANCREATIC DIABETES HUMAN DIABETES 

 PANCREATIC DIABETES 



THE preceding lectures have introduced the fundamental 

 facts of carbohydrate metabolism well enough to permit us 

 to venture into one of the most interesting but at the same 

 time one of the most difficult problems in the study of metab- 

 olism, that of pancreatic diabetes. 



In the current of the sciences, just as in the life of man, 

 there are periods when every good intention and the most 

 honest effort are insufficient to make any decisive and pro- 

 ductive progress possible; evil days when ability is com- 

 pelled to employ a good part of its innate energy to keep 

 from sinking into dejected inefficiency. Then all. of a sud- 

 den some new event takes place, changes the situation of 

 affairs and brushes aside the impediments which have op- 

 posed the free development of the long accumulated latent 

 energy. And at once a period begins of heightened, feverish 

 activity that endeavors to make up for all that was missed 

 in the dull times of stagnation. 



Discovery of Pancreatic Diabetes. One of these for- 

 tunate events occurred in the development of metabolism 

 study when in 1889 Oskar Minkowski and Josef v. Mering 

 discovered pancreatic diabetes in Naunyn's laboratory in 

 Strassburg. 1 



At the same time, and independently of the authors just 

 named, N. de Dominici, in Naples, also discovered the ex- 

 istence of pancreatic diabetes (an example of the strange 

 law of the doubling of events which often has appeared even 

 in physiology, probably because a discovery cannot be made 



1 Literature upon Pancreatic Diabetes : O. Minkowski, Ergebn. d. Pathol., 

 1, 69, 1896; C. v. Noorden, Handb. d. Pathol. d. Stoffwechs., 2d ed., 2, 38-43, 

 1907; A. Biedl, Innere Sekretion, pp. 375-399, 1910. 



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