War on Diabetes

The campaign against diabetes mellitus continues unabated, and new light on its treatment is revealed with surprising frequency. Why the disease is engaging the attention of so many medical men may be surmised from some figures just published in the Statistical Bulletin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The general tendency of diabetes mortality has been upward for fully 20 years. Since 1919 the rise has been still faster. The highest death-rates are found in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, the lowest in the southern and western states, largely because Negroes are less susceptible than whites, while Jews and Irish are more so than other white races. The rate also rises rapidly with advancing age and is higher among females than males. In New York State it now hovers around 22 per 100,000, which is higher than measles or diphtheria. "Insulin," perhaps the most widely heralded medical discovery of the past year, continues to show promise, though its originators claim only that it has alleviated some cases and enabled patients to assimilate a more normal diet. Announcement has just been made of the "cure" of an apparently hopeless case of diabetes. A New York mathematics teacher and former athlete, Joseph Corbett, became ill in 1917, grew progressively worse, was pronounced incurable by physicians, and last October, after a breakdown, lingered on a starvation diet, too weak to turn in bed. His wife had bought a cemetery plot for him. He began a regular dosage of insulin on February 2. The 9% sugar in his blood has now been reduced to normal, less than 1%, he has gained 50 pounds, is able to eat a generous diet, and takes vigorous exercise. Insulin was evolved by Drs. J. J. R. Macleod and F. G. Banting, of the physiological department, University of Toronto. It is extracted from the pancreas glands of sheep or beeves, and is named from the " islands of Langerhans"--little spots of vascular tissue through which the internal secretion of the pancreas passes into the blood. In normal health this secretion regulates the assimilation of sugar in the diet. Production of insulin on a large scale is difficult and expensive. Its manufacture is strictly safeguarded under patents held by the University of Toronto, and it is made by only one firm in the United States. It is administered hypodermically. Cambridge University biochemists, L. B. Winter and W. Smith, are developing an extract of yeast, very similar in composition to insulin, but much cheaper to manufacture, and of less dangerous toxic qualities. This may prove a satisfactory substitute. Dr. James C. Irvine, Principal and Vice Chancellor of St. Andrew's University, Scotland, one of the world's greatest authorities on blood sugar, asserts that no complete cure of diabetes has yet been found, though he recognizes the value of insulin. There are eleven forms of sugar glucose, he says, of which the body can utilize only a few. If these so-called "gamma" compounds can be isolated from glucose and the diet limited to them, it is certain that diabetes can be cured. But the world's present knowledge of these sugars is barely a scratch on the surface.