Thames Star. WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1923. INSULIN AND DIABETES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15885, 25 July 1923, Page 4

Thames Star.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 1923. INSULIN AND DIABETES.

"With malice towards none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”— Lincoln.

Insulin, which Sir Maui Pomare promises to import for the benefit of sufferers from diabetes, is “a solu-

tion of internal secretion of the pancreas of the ox.”

Diabetes mellitus, the common form of diabetes, is generally field to be due to the failure of the pancreas to pour its internal secretion into the blood. Just what the explanation of the chain of effects may be remains a mystery, but it is established that the short-coming on the part of the pancreas gives rise to certain chemical changes in the body and very serious illness results. The normal person derives a good deal of benefit from the consumption of sugar in,one form or another and in the normal healthy body the sugar, which is a "fuel food, is carried by the blood to the muscles and after undergoing chemical change is utilised by them. In a person suffering from diabetes, however, the mu'scles cannot make use of .the sugar, which, therefore, accumulates in the blood. Moreover the muscles, deprived of their usual food, have to find their fuel elsewhere, and so they levy on the fat reserves of the body. The . fat has to undergo chemical change before it is available, and certain residues remain in the blood, acting as poisons and involving considerable danger to the patient. These residues are fatty acids, and in order to neutralise them and deprive them of their poisonous quality, nature makes still another call on the reserves, of the body. It wants ammonia, which, as everyone knows, has the power to neutralise acids, and in order to get ammonia the albuminous substances of the body are broken down, the double drain causing the wasting that is so marked a feature of the disease.

Diabetes has at length been attacked from a new angle, and the attack seems likely to prove successful. Insulin is the latest of the drugs derived from animal organs. The° thyroid, lymphatic, supra-renal, pituitary, thymus and mammary glands have all been made to yield extracts of medicinal value, and now the pancreas has been similarly treated. There are two kinds of secretions, one “external,” of which the pancreatic juice is an example, and the other “internal,” which means that it is discharged into the blood, and it is the internal extract that is required in the treatment of diabetes. Arguing that, if the failure of the internal secretion of the pancreas caused diabetes, the disease mgiht be cured by supplying extract of the pancreas, Dr. F. G. (Banting, of Toronto, decided to try the experiment.

Insulin is an extract of fresh, healthy beef pancreas. The fresh organ is soaked in a mixture of alcohol and dilute hydro-chloric acid, and the solution thus obtained is sterilised and standardised. It is administered bv hypodermic injection, not by the mouth. The effect is not permanent, because the injections are merely a substitute for the daily manufacture of the secretion by the healthy organ, and consequently the treatment has to be carried on every day.