The discovery and understanding of diabetes evolved over centuries through contributions from many individuals:
- The term "diabetes" was first coined by Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the 2nd century AD, who provided the first accurate description of the disease
. The word "mellitus," meaning "honey sweet," was added by Thomas Willis in 1675 due to the sweet taste of diabetic urine
- Ancient civilizations, including Egyptians around 1550 BC and Ayurvedic physicians in India, recognized the condition and noted the sweetness of urine, calling it "madhumeha" or honey urine
- The role of the pancreas in diabetes was discovered in 1889 by Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski, who showed that removing the pancreas from dogs induced diabetes
- The discovery of insulin, the hormone regulating blood sugar, was made in the early 20th century. Sir Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and John Macleod at the University of Toronto isolated insulin in 1921, and James Collip later purified it for clinical use
. This breakthrough enabled effective treatment of diabetes and earned Banting and Macleod the Nobel Prize in 1923
In summary, while diabetes as a condition was known since antiquity, the pancreas's role was discovered by von Mering and Minkowski in 1889, and insulin—the key to treatment—was discovered by Banting, Best, and Macleod in 1921
