Monday, Dec. 29, 1924

Insulin Pills

There are few remedies for diabetes. What is perhaps the best known remedy is the injection of insulin into the veins. But injections are troublesome, expensive, often painful. Come Mendel, Wittgenstein, Wolffenstein, three wise men of Berlin, professors at the University there. They have made insulin into pills; not such pills as are wont to be taken by candlelight with a sob, a gulp of water and a lump of sugar. No, for insulin dissolves in the juices of the stomach and becomes virtueless. These pills melt in the mouth like very sugar, but, unlike sugar, they melt into the body direct, are absorbed through the pores of the tongue. The effect is reported to equal that of injections. Thus may the diabetes-stricken fight their malady, at some future time, with lozenges.