Dutch. Role of urine in diagnosing diabetes.
Note that Dutch (and Scandinavian) heritage adults have been hardest hit since the ~1980 Epstein Barr mutation, causing many new Type 1 diagnoses in adults. I’m one at age 28 in 1987.
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While case reports in medical journals are often about zebras because the amount of accumulated knowledge about typical cases is enormous and does not need to be augmented by more reports of typical cases, to Renaissance German peasants who were not physicians, to Martin Luther who was a theologian, and to an era which had no established theory of what type 1 diabetes or its clinical presentation was, any ordinary case of type 1 diabetes will seem worth reporting. Also keep in mind that in contrast to the selection of articles for publication in medical journals, this anecdote came forward for publication because it was part of a record of what people were saying to Luther and what he was saying in response. It was not selected for medical reasons; the medical interpretation of it comes later. Finally, type 1 diabetes was more rare in earlier times than it is today, for reasons which are unclear. I did research for a paper on the history of type 1 diabetes once and I only found published evidence of the disease circa 1800 in Britain, and everywhere I saw it mentioned, the physicians reported it as a strange new disease. A few even said that it usually struck pale children with dark hair, but I’m not sure what significance that observation might have. Interestingly, I only found the first evidence of type 1 diabetes reports in German sources around 1840, so possibly this delay was because Germany at that time was much less industrialized than Britain, if type 1 diabetes has some link to industrialization.
And because the reasons are unclear, it’s not at all certain that the difference isn’t just improved reporting. You point out yourself that many of those describing it centuries ago did not know what they are seeing. The bottom line is that old data is so highly fragmentary that it’s not possible to compare it to contemporary figures with any sort of confidence. We don’t know what we don’t know, and no amount of interpretation or interpolation will change that. What is known for sure is that the number of T1D cases and their demographic distribution is far greater than we believed even two or three decades ago.
OK, now your argument about the prevalence of T1D vs. Prader-Willi makes even less sense.
If you desperately want to believe this passage describes a diabetic, fine. But I’m done with this discussion.
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Completely off topic.
But funny sign in a local restaurant.
The more you run over a dead groundhog … The flatter it gets.
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Amen
David, you’ve skipped over an important passage in what I reported, which was that doctors said that they were surprised at these “new” cases of diabetes in young people, which they hadn’t seen before. It could be that as society was becoming more organized, it was also noticing type 1 patients more or that people were able to afford to bring them to doctors, so they were becoming more visible, but it could also be that cases were just becoming more common. It is also a problem in the history of medicine that you have to distinguish how contemporaries were reporting things from what things really were. I took the Diploma course in the History of Medicine at the London Society of Apothecaries, where we were taught all the historiographic problems in the field, and I would recommend that course to anyone who is interested, especially since they have now created the opportunity to study for that diploma outside London.
There is evidence of secular variation in the incidence of type 1 diabetes. For some reason there was a dramatic rise of new cases in Poland in the 1970s (was it industrializing then? I don’t know), and that it has been on the increase again recently, though no one can explain why. In the last few years that increasing rate of new cases also seems to have leveled off, again for unknown reasons. Someone should investigate whether type 1 diabetics having children is increasing the prevalence of the disease.
There are a number of things relating to diabetes that need to have the definitive research done, and that is certainly one of them.
I can’t take issue with your discussion of medical historiagraphy, but it just reinforces what I said: we don’t know what we don’t know.
@Kevin23, I’m Finnish, Swedish and Danish - American. I assume it comes from the Finnish side, but that’s just a guess.
Digital med tags? ROTFL!!! No medical facility is allowed to even begin to look at an electronic device (like a USB drive) with your medical record, because the drive might have some sort of malware on it. They’re also not allowed to go to a website with your record on it (like RoadID provides) because the site might have hidden malware on it. And they ignore repeated requests to dial the secret phone number on your MedicAlert or RoadID.
Well, they are allowed to rove all over the internet on their cell phones, looking at photos of Britney Spears… That’s why 40% have been breached. Lets not pretend. But, honestly, they often don’t look at the Dexcom, so I don’t think they would look at this. But, that is the recommendation of the Epilepsy Foundation. Britney Spears - Oops!...I Did It Again (Official HD Video) - YouTube
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Why aren’t you using an insulin pump? They are soooo much better than shots.
Yes, and a Lexus is better than a Yugo . . . if you can afford one. I can’t speak for others, but that option isn’t available to everyone.