The History of Diabetes

A long time ago, before our time, there was a sickness called diabetes. Not contagious, but yet hereditary and in some cases caused by excessive sugar consumption. Then, before 1922, this sickness was incurable but now it has been tamed. Yes I said “tamed”, and it has been tamed by a little 3 syllable word called insulin. It has come along way from what it was when it was first used and it changed life as we know it. Its impact on life will last forever and a lifetime. I know for a fact that if I ever cross the sickness that requires insulin, I would be the most grateful for the people who made it.

Insulin (originated from insula, a Latin word for island) is the internal secretion of the pancreas formed by the groups of cells called the islets of Langerhans which was discovered by a medical student in 1869 (Allen). This hormone is needed to enable glucose to enter the cells and provide energy. On the path to diabetes curing, in 1889, Oscar Minkowski took a dog’s pancreas out and days later, flies started to fest on its urine. Come to find out, there was sugar in the dog’s urine (Enerson). The discovery of this was amazing. Fast forward a decade or three, in 1922, Frederick Banting and Charles Best made the best discovery using insulin. During this time, preparations of insulin were taken from pigs and cattle (Allen). It was extracted from pancreas tissues crudely. Sadly, the pigs and cattle did not get out of this happy. Now it is made by genetic engineering which is the direct manipulation of an organism’s genome using biotechnology. So no one or nothing is being endangered (Allen). Lucky pigs!

Before insulin was discovered, life was tragic for people with diabetes. Most of them, if not all, died. Some were even born with di...

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...a healthy life. While they lived that healthy life, they have to be more responsible than a person without diabetes because anything could happen. Bottom line, society or life before the discovery of insulin was bad for a lot of people who had this sickness. So thanks to insulin life has changed then, now, and later.

Researching this paper opened my eyes up to a lot. I realized that everything that we have today, people didn’t have it back then and they died. Insulin is more than a cure to me, it’s also a lesson. I learned that everything shouldn’t always be handed to you and you have to work for something’s. I took them decades to figure out a cure for diabetes without people having to starve themselves. Even though it took a long time, they finally got it together. They saved many lives and made a huge impact on life. Keep trying and maybe you could do the same.