![]() ![]() Later experimenters narrowed this search to the islets of Langerhans (a fancy name for clusters of specialized cells in the pancreas). ![]() This led to the idea that the pancreas was the site where “pancreatic substances” (insulin) were produced. ![]() In 1889, two German researchers, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering, found that when the pancreas gland was removed from dogs, the animals developed symptoms of diabetes and died soon afterward. So how did this wonderful breakthrough blossom? Let’s travel back a little more than 100 years ago.… Harsh diets (some prescribed as little as 450 calories a day!) sometimes even caused patients to die of starvation. This could buy patients a few extra years but couldn’t save them. ![]() The most effective treatment was to put patients with diabetes on very strict diets with minimal carbohydrate intake. However, if you have diabetes, no doubt you’re also a big fan of one particular 20 th-century discovery: insulin.īefore insulin was discovered in 1921, people with diabetes didn’t live for long there wasn’t much doctors could do for them. The modern age has given us some amazing technological advances-what we would do without the internet, our iPhones or high-speed travel?įor many people, surviving life without these things sounds rough. Since the dawn of time, we have searched for ways to make life easier for us. ![]()
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